Rashi ups post sales support ante with service camps

Mumbai

Ausgust 10th, 2007

In this age where customer retention is so important, Mumbai-based Rashi
Peripherals has come out with a novel way to engage its channel partners. They
recently held five service camps covering cities like Ahmedabad, Aurangabad,
Nashik, Pune and Surat, as part of an already earmarked 25-city program by the
end of December 2007.

This is interesting because at the recently held IT Panchayats, organized by
DQ Channels and The DQ Week, where partners and distributors in C- and D-class
cities come together to debate on issues affecting them, distributors have been
coming under a lot of heat because of inadequate post-sales support. Rashi has
been an active participant at these IT Panchayats and it seems like it has taken
a cue from this channel feedback, resulting in these service camps.

Ashok Goenka, Head Support, Rashi Peripherals said, "These service camps
go a long way in solving problems for partners and give us a chance to get a
first hand feedback from some of the places where we are not able to reach out
in normal day to day business. This is a new concept and it is a good way to
reach out to the partners."

Highlighting the importance of such camps especially in smaller cities,
Suresh Pansari, MD, Rashi Peripherals said, "With upcountry markets booming
and showing good potential for premium products, our endeavour is to go a step
further and build trust and confidence for the customers and partners through
these camps".

This is more or less in tune with The Manufacturers' Association for
Information Technology (MAIT) annual survey, which showed that sales in metros
have declined. Server sales declined by five percent in the four metros - Delhi,
Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata - and by 53 percent in Class INext Bangalore,
Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune. However, it grew 23 percent in other smaller cities
across the country. The Metro cities accounted for 35 percent of total sales,
while the Class INext four cities accounted for seven percent of the sales and
the other smaller cities for 58 percent.

Coming back to the service camps, Goenka informed that over than 200 partners
have attended these service camps. One of the important aspects of these service
camps was that the attending partners who were eager to increase their knowledge
in handling the products better, which was duly done by the visiting technical
team.

According to Goenka, the partners also benefit from such camps. They get all
their defective products and repairs on the same are undertaken at these camps.
Also, if the partners have any queries, they can get these resolved.

Some of the partners who attended the camps were Excel Computers and
Mainframe Computers from Aurangabad, Komal Systems and Datacare Corporation from
Pune, and Infoweb Technologies from Nashik.

Nimesh Shah, one of the directors of Komal Systems complimented Rashi on this
initiative and said, "Overall, the camp was quite good."

The participating brands were Asus, Altec Lansing, Jetway and Sony. "The
emphasis were on brands that do not have an off the shelf replacement option but
are in great demand from the upcountry market", added Goenka. At the
present camps Rashi are having only those brands that have a repair warranty and
not replacement warranty.