IT Panchayat in Mangalore

After Kozhikode, the next stop for IT Panchayat in South India was Mangalore.
The port city (also called as petro city) of Mangalore welcomed IT Panchayat
with warmth. Mangalore is known for its industries. The city has got more than
70 channel partners addressing various business segments. But, there is no
single association to represent the issues and problems faced by the resellers.
This was the topic for discussion at the recently concluded IT Panchayat event
in Mangalore.

The event was hosted in Mothi Mahal Hotel on Feb 10, and attracted more than
40 people from the IT trading community. It opened with a couple of brief
presentations from sponsors such as Hitachi and ICICI Bank. The much-awaited
discussion session was triggered-off by S Gopikrishna, Content Editor-Channel
Publications Group, CyberMedia, who was also the moderator for the program,
where he asked why Mangalore lacks on the association front?

The reply came quickly from Kasturi Gopinath Pai of GS Distributors, who was
on the panel for the discussion. “Resellers here are not cooperative and willing
to work for common cause. Everyone is busy with their own business and the
channels here feel that they do not need an association,” he said.

The other panelist such as Sujai Monteiro of CATS and Sadhashiv Bhandari of
Alpha Systems also agreed with Gopinath Pai and his viewpoint. Mangalore is one
of the fast-growing upcountry markets in India and acts as a hub to nearby
markets. The city however does not have any distributors, except for Rashi
Peripherals, having their local office there. Mangalore is primarily addressed
by sub-distributors from Bengaluru, who have a local office in the city. This
comes as both blessing and curse for the local market. Small-time resellers are
able to get attractive price offers from these outstation sub-distributors,
while local players are not able to match with their offerings.

“We are not able to play the volume game as others do from Bengaluru. So,
should we not get an opportunity to do business in this market?” questioned a
reseller from the audience side.

The common issues of undercutting, warranty, Dead on Arrival (DoA) and
back-end settlements, among others, occupied the major part of discussion.
Finally, the key resellers of Mangalore have now resolved to form a regional
association at the earliest. The DQ Week has also expressed its support to such
an initiative.

The night ended with a cocktail party and dinner for the resellers.

DQC NEWS BUREAU