Shimla channel wants better disti representation

New Delhi

September 21st, 2007

The IT channel community of Shimla feels that the region has got enough
business potential and its high time that national distributors open their
offices there. At the recently held IT Panchayat, organized by DQ Channels and
The DQ Week at Shimla, the channel community of the region came face to face
with representatives from national distributors and put forth their issues of
concern.

Expressing their concern on the absence of distributors for the IT channel
community, Anil Sharma of Shimla's Ace Infotech felt that it is high time that
national distributors like Ingram Micro India or Redington India started their
offices in Shimla. "There is no distributor that has an office in Shimla.
Because of this, we face a lot of problems related to service, replacements and
other issues such as DoA (Dead on Arrival) as well. We firmly believe that
today, this market is growing at a good pace. Especially, segments like
government, education and home are encouraging the usage of IT. Ideally, this
should have been an encouraging situation for distributors but has not prompted
them to start their offices at Shimla so far. We urge them to seriously think
about it soon," he added.

Speaking on this issue, Satnam Singh Atwal from Access Marketing Services
said that it takes a lot of time and effort to get the material in Shimla and
things may change if distributors start their offices in Shimla.

"Shimla is a big market today. All kinds of business activity is
happening here. All the telecom operators like Hutch, Bharti and Reliance have
got their representation here. The IT industry is also growing big over here,
specially the government segment. Even with this kind of potential, there are a
lot of times when we had to send our people to collect the material from these
distributors in Parwanoo or even to Chandigarh at times. This is really hurting
our business now. As a community we would surely benefit a lot if distributors
start their offices here with local billing," he added.

Reacting to this issue, SP Singh of Ingram Micro said that the company is
fully committed towards working for the channel community. "As of now we
have our warehouse at Parwanoo and it just takes two days to take the material
from Parwanoo to Shimla. So this way we are trying our best to meet the
requirements of this region," he added.

Debating another issue of forming cartels among big distributors, Bhupender
Singh Verma from Himtron said that cartel formation is hurting the overall
channel community in a bad manner and this is leading to a lot of other
malpractices.

"It hurts us because you never know when the price of a particular
product comes down. You have purchased it at a certain cost and after a while
its cost comes down. Distributors engaged in this practice should certainly not
do it," he explained.

Sunil Suri from Redington chose not to comment on this issue. "I cannot
comment on this issue bit all I can say is that distributors and the IT channel
work hand in hand and are part and parcel of the overall community. We will
always be looking at working closely with the IT channel community," he
explained.