No tripping for Tripplite on its Indian sojourn

Mumbai

October 8th, 2007

After a gap of six years, Tripplite re-launched itself in the Indian market
last year. Recently it signed up Radiant Computer Technologies and Bright
Engineering as its tier-one executive partners. With plans to expand its channel
base further, Tripplite organized a meeting recently in Mumbai to meet up with
prospective partners there and had the participation of around 50 resellers.
Tripplite hopes to add 10 new partners to the tier two as their business
partners.

Tripplite is seeking partners who would possess prior experience of selling
power equipments and have a good knowledge about the various aspects of power
supply. Vipin Sharma, VP Sales for the SAARC region, "We would like to have
few partners as we believe in selective distribution."

Sharma also stated that they are seeking partners who will exclusively sell
Tripplite. "It is very important to us that our partners do not deal in our
competitors products. Their sole focus should be on selling our products,"
he said. Tripplite has this policy in other countries as well.

However Anees Khalfay of Radiant Technologies claimed that he did stock other
brands, since customers demanded that. However, he reaffirmed that he was more
focused on selling Tripplite.

Since UPS and inverters are the flagship products of Tripplite, it wants to
go one up on its competitors by launching some innovative products in this
product range. The company unveiled some of its new products at the Mumbai event
and Vipin took great pains to highlight their exclusive features.

Tripplite first made its mark in the Indian market when it had partnered with
Videocon way back in 1994. Due to some strategic problems, this partnership with
Videocon ended in 2000. Now Tripplite is reaching to the Indian customers
through its partners. Kamlesh Mehta is currently the country manager for
Tripplite.

The one issue, that Tripplite will have to resolve if its wants to make a
successful inroad into the Indian market, is establishing its local presence. It
is headquartered in Chicago while Sharma is based in Dubai. While signing up a
new vendor, most partners prefer having a local representative who they can get
in touch with for resolving any incumbent issues.

Also, Tripplite will not have an easy time, as there are several
well-established competitors in the Indian market and that too in the organized
segment. The large local and fragmented UPS and inverter market is also a
deterrent for UPS companies trying to make their mark in the country.

To deal with these challenges, Tripplite will leverage on its competitive
price as an advantage as well as what it claimed are innovative features in its
power products. It is also engaging on an extensive training program with its
partners. It has a technical training program wherein the partners will be
trained on the technical aspects of the UPSs and inverters.

As it targets the enterprise to SMBs in the India, Tripplite firmly believes
in the push and pull strategy, wherein it will assist its partners by
approaching the potential customers and explaining to them the various features
of its products and how they can be put to good use in their business
environment.

After this the partners would take over in dealing with the customers. It would
also encourage partners to approach their existing customers and talk to them on
the various aspects of Tripplite products. Sharma added, "Back-end support
will always be available with us."

He also stressed on the fact that Tripplite products were not mere box
products that the partners would install and forget about. They could sign up
AMCs with their clients that would help them make extra money.