Jupiter clarifies its stance

New Delhi: With regard to the news report published in The DQ Week, issue dated April 6-12, “Is Jupiter Exiting IT Domain?” I would like to say that Jupiter has no plans to exit the IT distribution business. In fact the company has ambitious plans to make significant investment in manufacturing of IT peripherals in India.

The company is making a tactical shift from being totally dependent on imports to setting up manufacturing facilities in India. We are doing this in order to control quality and achieve competitive edge in the market. Macro economic changes in Taiwan and China have necessitated this and in order to fuel the growth and achieve a quantum leap in business, we have decided to setup manufacturing facilities in Baddi, near Chandigarh.

The necessary approvals from the state and central government has been received and the factory construction has been completed and we are targeting to commence production by Jan 2010. The company plans to invest Rs 45 crore in manufacturing activities within the next two years of which Rs 30 crore will be invested by the end of 2009 itself.

I believe that in order to serve the maturing market in Indian it is now important to be close to the customers and be able to respond quickly to their changing needs and preferences and this is only possible if you have a state of art manufacturing facility in India. I have a personal passion for IT distribution and I will only increase our commitment to this business. There is no question of waning interest or exiting from this business. Our plans, investments and sales performances validate this and speak for themselves.

Alok Garodia, MD, Jupiter International

EDITOR REPLIES:

Some inputs on the lines of the above statement from Alok Garodia were considered and included while doing the story. However, there were strong reasons because of which The DQ Week still carried the story. First, channel partners across various cities were saying that Jupiter is losing interest in IT business and their focus now was the sunrise solar power sector. Secondly, Jupiter was not willing to share its market performance figures in IT business to support their claim that IT was a focus for them.