Season's sops

New Delhi

October 30th, 2007

With the festival of lights around the corner, vendors and channel partners
are falling over each other to offer competitive schemes to their customers.
Cash prizes, gold coins, foreign trips, jewelry, home appliances are some of the
bait they are throwing to lure the customers.

Here's the list:

Microsoft Hardware is offering a 'Dil Chahata Hai' promotion for channel
partners to promote its reseller network across India. Based on the inventory
sale value the dealer achieved during the offer period, s/he can have the
Philips hand blender, non-stick cooking ware, Eureka Forbes vacuum cleaner, LG
Home theatre and Eureka Forbes water purifier - all virtually for the asking.

And not only this! The more enterprising among them can even win a Tanishq
jewelry voucher! "Confident of adding spice to the festive season,
Microsoft Hardware has launched this scheme to keep our channel partners
motivated and excited at all times while re-enforcing the fact that they truly
are part of the Microsoft family. This Dil Chahata Hai' is our special festive
gift to our partner family," gushed Mohit Anand, Country
Manager-Entertainment and Devices Divison, Microsoft.

This apart, Microsoft has tied up with several other players like Acer, which
has introduced 'Acer Mania' for the season - an exclusive reward program for
their elite retail partners. S Rajendran, GM, Sales and Marketing, Acer India,
said that the scheme rewards retail partners who have a choice of a host of
offerings, available both monthly and quarterly. (These are apart from the
regular offerings provided to the channel partners, and include monthly booster
schemes; rewards for achieving quarter targets and an exclusive booster for AMD
based Acer SKUs and pre-load OS-based Acer SKUs in partnership with Microsoft.)

It's not just The Best IT World that stands to benefit. "Our special
festive season offers running through till December are equally for the medium
and small dealers," said Sandeep Parasrampuria, MD, The Best IT World
"Cash benefits, foreign trips ... Dealers get a free air ticket for
Mauritius or Bangkok if they can prove they have met their sales target in these
three months."

HP has its own schemes to promote HP Photosmart A626 that is debuting this
festive season. The printer can be had for just Rs 7,999. The HP Photosmart A626
is targeted at home users looking for quality photos at breakneck speed! Said
Vibhor Bansal, Country Category Manager, Personal Printing Products, Imaging and
Printing Group, HP India Sales: "The new HP Photosmart A626 Compact Photo
Printer is to capture special moments - especially during Dusserha, Eid and
Diwali. We are really very excited about our compact photo printer range. This
is because personal photo printing has set a trend that we feel is here to stay,
what with the boom in image-capturing devices like mobile phones and digital
cameras."

Then again there is Ahmedabad-based Vivek Goenka of Damson Technologies that
is offering 'Good Pricing' schemes under which customers can expect a price
discount of Rs 2,000 to 3,000 on every laptop or desktop they purchase. Added
Goenka: "We believe price discount is the best thing to offer. It lets them
do what they like with the discounted amount. It's better than giving something
free that they very likely already have. Discounts of up to 40 percent can be
had on computer accessories on the MRP."

BenQ, for its part, is happy offering just cash incentives on its select
projector models. Opined Max Hsu, Business Head-CE Division, BenQ India,
"Our channel partners are the face of our company." Good! This is
after all Goddess Lakshmi's season!

Cyberstar, though, believes giving it 'in kind' is more wholesome. Its Molex
promotional schemes of OND Q4 07 for channel partners who log in orders for
Molex products worth Rs 25 lakh or more, get a three nights/four days
all-expense-paid holiday package per person. Taiwan-based Genius' Dhanvarsha
scheme offer for its partners includes both resellers and volume partners. Valid
till December 31 2007, the scheme offers up to 120gm of silver to resellers or
dealers.

Among the most explosive offers are those from Xbox 360! Its 'Super Stylish
Super Saver offer' in association with Panasonic available at Ezone stores
across the country offers '07Block buster game titles free with the Xbox 360
system. Manoj Kumar, CEO, Ezone said, "Superior service and value for money
- this is the Ezone mantra, and we are glad that Xbox 360 is associating with us
this festive season."

Epson has something special for even its partners' family members. Its 'Full
Family Khush' scheme applies for all Epson Certified Channel Partners promoting
Epson's Inkjet Multifunction Printers.

LG Electronics' new schemes for its channel partners are led by the Channel
Handshake, which seeks to rope in new partners. Those who buy six desktop PCs
(any mix) get a LG external DVD writer with light scribe technology. The
growth-based LG PC reseller scheme concentrates on existing partners; yet if one
of them achieves 25 percent growth over the monthly average, s/he gets a DVD
writer with Light Scribe technology. Under the Channel scheme for laptops,
dealers and distributors get to fly to Australia, South Africa, Bangkok -
depending of course on the number of units they sell.

MSI too has rolled out schemes for its valued Premium Partners. This program
is for partners pushing sales of P35/31 and MSI Range of Graphic card Bundles.
The validity is till November 2007.

APC has launched APC Festive Frenzy, an exciting consumer promotion scheme
for APC Back-UPS 500, APC Back-UPS 650 and APC Home UPS. If the customer wins a
prize, the channel partners do so as well. Besides, customers get a guaranteed
gift on purchase -a trendy windcheater worth Rs 400.

But the bottomline is: Do such schemes actually help to sell the product
being promoted?

Observed Sunil Bhukania of Bhukania Computronic: "They certainly catch
attention, especially during the festive, thereby boosting sales."

Others like Sumit Kumar of Life Computers disagree: "This festive season
has not helped our business much. This is because customers are waiting for VAT
to get implemented in UP. HP is offering free toners on purchase of its
printers. But vendors rarely stick to their word, and once the purchase is made
they start imposing all sorts of conditions on customers." Ajay Grover of
Meerut-based Foretek Systems endorses this view. "We haven't seen any of
these schemes making a dramatic difference in market behavior, but ..."

But wait till Diwali!