Sogo Computers: Growing bigger and better

Aggressive upcountry strategy for business expansion in addition to being the
one-stop-shop for a number of IT products centered around the PC business,
enabled Sogo to grow aggressively last fiscal

Clocking more than Rs 200 crore in turnover, Sogo showed over 110 percent
growth in the last fiscal. One of the largest independent sub-distributors in
south India, Sogo owes its success to its aggressive upcountry strategy for
business expansion in addition to the fact that it is the one-stop-shop for a
number of IT products centered around the PC business. Apart from building on
its partnerships with Asus, Acer, Mercury, Seagate, IBM, D-Link or Krypton, Sogo
also concentrated on its retail expansion especially in the upcountry markets
last fiscal.

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Highlights Aggressive retail push Consolidation in Karnataka before moving outside Geographic expansion with focus on markets like Mangalore, Mysore and Hubli Continued to build on existing partnerships

In addition to marketing PCs from brands such as Compaq, HP and IBM, Sogo's
own brand of PCs continued to be sought after by customers. Under the Sogo brand
the company is offering its own custom built PCs, desktops and servers. Sogo has
also announced its new range of Intel Celeron powered mobile computers. PCs
apart, the fact that Sogo sells and supports a very wide range of peripherals
and accessories through a reseller network across the country, helped its
growth. Working along with over 100 employees, Sogo continued its brand building
exercise through its offices in Bangalore, Hubli, Mangalore, Mysore, Davangere,
Belgaum and Bellary.

Sogo set up nine premium retail outlets operational in Bangalore city and two
in Mangalore. Looking to consolidating their base in Karnataka before venturing
elsewhere, Sogo looked at penetration into at least nine more centers - Mysore
and Hubli, to name a few, in the last fiscal. Through its Iceware chain of
stores Sogo is aiming to provid the Indian buyer quality products, ambience,
service in addition to a range of brands.

As far as future plans go, Sogo is looking at building its base in the
smaller cities because when the time comes for Sogo to expand its operations in
other states, this would be a good strategy to hit the second level of cities
there.