Ranchi partners want more support from distis

Ranchi: The Eastern upcountry markets have been registering one of the lowest growth rates owing to the economic scenario. The issue came up during the recent IT Panchayat held here on March 16 in association with The DQ Week. As channel partners across Ranchi turned up at the event armed with queries regarding warranty policies and supply shortages, the national distributors focused on payment and credit problems.

The sponsors of the event were Symantec, Emerson, Gigabyte and Go IP. Over 85 channel partners attended the event. Representatives of Ingram Micro, Redington, Neoteric and Supertron were panelists at the event. Things heated up as complaints related to shortage in supply of Samsung LCD monitors was discussed.

Ingram Micro addressed the issues of transit damages and interest levied on late payment surfaced, which were raised by Technocrat, Ranchi division. Both Ingram Micro and Redington admitted that the market in Ranchi and its surrounding area is suffering heavily due to the slowdown.

Talking about the market scenario and the possibility of an economical onslaught, Bidyut Roy, Regional Sales Manager, Ingram Micro said, “At the moment, Ranchi is flooded with payment dues and the policy of charging interest on outstanding dues has indeed made the channel partners in the region irate. I fully understand that payment overdues is the result of the global slowdown.”

Redington followed suit and confirmed that Ranchi has been badly hit by the ongoing economic crisis and it is a result of this that problems related to credit problems and overdues are surfacing.

The discussion further heated up with the dealers accusing national distributors in Ranchi of overlooking their problems with the vendors. Dealers complained that whenever any issue related to the product arises, the distributors take little interest in it and bluntly hand over the case to service centers and transit damage charges are rejected by the vendors on every stance.

As a resolution to the crisis, Vivek Singhania of Computers India Corporation opined that the tier-2 and 3 players are suffering the most because of the vendors refusal of the transit damages and the national distributors like Ingram Micro and Redington paying lukewarm attention to this problem. He suggested that since the national distributors have direct access to the vendor's top officials, the distributors should participate in influencing the vendor's policies.