Our focus will be beyond top 26 cities: Prashant Prakash

Prashant Prakash, CEO, Global Infonet, is confident of changing the distribution landscape in India

Starting this month, Global Infonet Distribution started distributing Samsung phablets and tablets in Delhi as its tier 1 National Distributor (ND). Few months back, the same distribution was handed over to Rashi Peripherals and it continues to do so but there hasn't been any exclusivity. Setting this as a pretext, it appears that strategies-of both vendors and distributors-have changed and evolved in years. Tracking these developments, Prashant Prakash, CEO, Global Infonet tries different strategies to stand the company out of the league. He says with conviction that his company will change the complete landscape of the distribution scenario in India with innovative strategies. Currently, Global Infonet distribute brands like Asus, Dell, Digisol, LG, SAP, Microsoft and recently Samsung. The company is also planning to venture into different segments such as networking, server and storage solutions as well as systems integration. DQ Channels spoke to the new CEO with his systematic plan of action.

It has been a month since you took over as the CEO of the company. How do you assess the health of the company?
The health of the company is pretty decent in terms of the revenue size, but there are areas of improvement where we will definitely work on. We were close to Rs 1400 crore of top line in the last year. I feel Global, as an organization, is fit for growth. With the current backend and front end infrastructure we can easily double our manpower.

Have you come across weak points?
Some of the regions have been weak. We have earmarked red, yellow and green; green means they are great regions, whatever the products they will fly. Yellow means area for improvement and red means we need to work on lot of parameters on that region.
In red, we have close to three regions where we have to enable the team, adding more manpower. The potential is high but we don't have many people. It also means empowering people. I will prepare CEOs in every state.

What is the current employee strength?
It is close to 300 and we are looking to increase the base. How many would be the subject of many businesses, we are also expanding our business and will add more verticals.

So what are the verticals you want on to add on?
Networking will be one area. System Integration-value business-is another area where we lack. Then we will add on the software side along with servers and storage. So the future plan is expansion. My team is hungry for growth. We are speaking to some of the leading brands.

Off lately, how has been the distribution business evolved. We see vendor strategies changing to an extent that there is no exclusivity to any particular distribution company?
Last 15 years, the principals who see a lot value additions from the distributor-they don't change them. If you don't add any value and work as C&F (Clearing and Forwarding) agents, they like to look for other options. As C&F comes with cost, and loyalties are changed easily.

What does adding value from a distributor's perspective entail?

It comes to the fundamentals of distribution business: inventory and credit. This is a typical scenario under traditional set up. But Global is going to change the way distribution business works in this country. We will propagate end to end ownership. There are three angles to it. For example, we have 100 brands under our umbrella and we will get our current partners to distribute other products, which they did with other distributors. It adds value. Second is the great geographical reach. All major distribution companies get majority share of their businesses from top 26 cities. In near future, more than 60% of our business will be outside of these 26 cities. As a distribution house we will give reach to the vendors. Also, we will delayer in a way that the ultimate gain is to the consumers.

What are the other developments?
The company is also relocating to Okhla aiming at consolidation as well as ambience. A large office will facilitate better communication with partners as well as vendors. Even strategically it will help as Nehru Place is near to our new place. It will help us logistically.