Lack Of Know-How Hampers Partners Business

The channel community in Amravati is suffering from the same issues that its
fraternity suffers in the rest of the country as well. But they are willing to
take this in their stride. However, they want to improve their technical
know-how which they claimed, vendors seemed to have no inclination to offer.

This was what came to the fore at the IT Panchayat held in the city, which
saw the participation of members of the Amravati Computer Dealers Association (ACDA)
as well as representatives from five distributor companies. These included
Gajanan Paturde of eSys Information Technologies, Subhasish of Redington India,
Kiran Morgaonkar of Ingram Micro, Chandrakant Varma of Cyberstar Infocom,
Vishwas A of Neoteric Infomatique and Himanshu Joshi of Rashi Peri­pherals.
Vinita Bhatia, Executive Editor, DQ Channels moderated the discussion.

Why the grouse?

Amravati is around 15km in circumference, but still manages to sell around 250
PCs a month. Most of the business comes from SOHO customers. Partners felt that
the only way they will be able to get more SOHO clients to use PCs in their
houses and offices is by highlighting the technical benefits of technology.

But they railed that vendors do not organize any technical workshops or
seminars, which will give them this much-needed knowledge. Amarjit Singh Juneja
of Juneja Computers and President, ACDA was curious to know what happened to the
market development funds allocated to distributors by vendors. “Why is none of
the MDF used in Amravati, when we know that with a little bit of technical
knowledge, we can easily increase our business?” he questioned.

This is where the association could play a positive role. It was decided that
the local body would communicate directly to the vendors and stress upon them
the need to have local workshops for the partners and end customers.

The panalist (L-R): Gajanan Paturde of eSys Information Technologies, Subhasish of Redington India, Kiran Morgaonkar of Ingram Micro India , Chandrakant Varma of Cyberstar Infocom, Vishwas A of Neoteric Infomatique and Himanshu Joshi of Rashi Peripherals

Service issues

Like every other city that the IT Panchayat has been to, service seems to be
inadequate in Amravati too. Other than LG and Samsung, no other vendor has
set-up a dedicated service center within the city, partners complained. But
Joshi informed the partners that Rashi had recently opened a service center of
its own for few brands it distributes.

Warranty woes

Prakash Purohit of Computer Shop fired that when a dealer buys a product, it is
not possible for him to sell it immediately. He might sell the product after six
months, but though the product carries a warranty of 12 months, the customer
then gets only six months of warranty.

To this, Varma replied that most distributors are aware of this issue and
therefore offer one month's extended warranty.

Another issue with warranty is that since there are hardly any service
centers in Amravati, dealers have to carry the product to Nagpur or Nashik. They
therefore end up spending money on transporting the product, besides paying
octroi when the repaired product reaches their shop again.

While the distributors empathized with this situation, they noted that the
only way out of this situation was to have warehouses within the city limits.

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