Sea Infonet appoints Universal as new RD

Kolkata: Reviving its sales policy in the lucrative market of North Bengal, Kolkata-based Sea Infonet recently appointed Siliguri-based Universal Computers as its regional distributor (RD) for Kaspersky products for the North Bengal region.

Sea Infonet, the distributor of Kaspersky products in eastern India discontinued their venture with Tejpal and Sons in North Bengal, citing poor performance on the latter's part.

Reasoning over the appointment, Biswajeet Saha, Director, Sea Infonet said, “Tejpal and Sons was looking at increasing its margins with lesser volumes, which is against the spirit of Kaspersky and Sea Infonet. While our other partners managed a five-fold increase in sales across the East, Tejpal stagnated with dismal sales figure which was direly affecting our overall performance, hence, we decided to discontinue with Tejpal.”

Since the last three months, the company had ceased its operations with Tejpal and had struck a stop-gap deal with Polaris to carry on the logistics as well as sales operations in the region. Now, with the interim term completing its cycle, Sea Infonet appointed Universal Computers.

“We are primarily targeting the Kaspersky single-user pack with Universal Computers which has registered the highest growth percentage. The company has a good track record and had prior experience in this field. In the competitive scenario in North Bengal, we need to have an aggressive partner who can increase volume business,” Saha added.

Recently, Kaspersky has taken the decision to hike the anti-virus prices coupled with shuffling of its existing channel model. The company is likely to target the enterprise segment this time apart from its usual focus on the home user vertical.

Although the decision is likely to be implemented in early 2010, Sea Infonet is satisfied with the overall performance in the East and hopes to revive the North Bengal market.

“Our primary vertical is the SOHO segment in the East. Even if the prices increase, it will still be better compared to other brands. In this process, our margins might suffer during the transactions. Over the time frame, brand recognition and acceptability of Kaspersky has been good and gradually we also hope to penetrate the enterprise vertical as well,” he concluded.

In monetary terms, it is estimated that Kaspersky's eastern region sales account for Rs 1 crore across verticals on a MoM basis and with the new appointment of Universal Computers, Sea Infonet is hoping to double its sales figure for the North Bengal area.

North Bengal unit accounts for 2,000 boxes every month in the overall eastern sales contribution.