Strategies, Knowledge and Yoga

Never in the annals of IT channels has this happened before.
DQ Channels made history by hosting, a first of its kind event - The DQ
Channels Solution Providers' Summit. More than 100 top IT solutions providers
from across the country gathered at the summit to share their experiences, to
learn, to enjoy. And while they were doing all this, also to de-stress the mind,
body and soul, there was Yoga.

The
two-day event saw the participation of over 100 key solutions providers from
Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Jammu, Indore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Ahmedabad,
Cochin, Goa, Coimbatore, and Pune, checking-in at the Hotel Retreat, Madh
Island, Mumbai. These busybodies had supposedly canceled meetings, trips,
outings, incurred wrath of their families to be a part of the event. Illness
would not stop these people too.

Reliance Infocomm as the
Presenting Sponsor; Xerox, Netcore and Motorola as the Gold Sponsors and Bestnet
as the Silver Sponsor.

The platform was set and
DQ Channels team members ensured that each and every session was eventful with
lot of interaction and participation from one and all.

What can be a better way
than to get their own peers to teach on how best to grow in their business? All
the session had a member from the DQ Channels editorial team moderating two
industry peers while they revealed their secrets behind their success.

Day
One 

Welcoming all the participants, Asim Raina, Editor, DQ Channels, promised
to keep every session as interactive and as informal as possible.

Prakash Bajpai,
president (Broadband and IDC), Reliance Infocomm began with a congratulatory
note. “The current wave of success would not have happened but for the
entrepreneurial skills of solutions providers,” he said. According to Prakash,
Reliance Infocomm started to build a nationwide telecom infrastructure as early
as 2001 and is now set to increase its presence in 2000 cities and towns.

 “With the kind of technology and innovations, today,
customers are talking a new language,” said Prakash, adding, “Tomorrow, we
will have Gigabyte Ethernet technology or the Metro Ethernet technology that
will bring about a change in the way technology eases things.”

Prakash also pointed out
the poor spectrum available for broadband applications and called on the
Government to solve the spectrum issue. According to him, there is a big market
opportunity in hosting applications space. “It is possible with a good
broadband infrastructure that Reliance is ready with,” he added. Prakash ended
his presentation asking the solutions providers to join hands with Reliance in
reaching out to the customers with their product and services.

Overseas
Business Associations

Panelist: Sanjiv Bhavnani (Visesh Infotecnics) and Nitin Shah (Allied
Digital)


Moderator: S Gopikrishna

It is time to take brand India
overseas. There are many entry points to start overseas operations. Sanjiv
Bhavnani, CEO & MD, Visesh Infotecnics feels that one should have a clear
objective and vision in mind. “When I enter a country I feel the style of that
country, whether it suits my style. I entered Thailand in 1995 for specific
consultancy work through recommendation. As relationship grew, business also
grew, over time they took equity in my company,” he reveals.

Sanjiv feels the size of
the company is irrelevant for going overseas. Sanjiv picked up an overseas
business customer when the company had a small turnover of Rs 50,000 only.

“The objective,
investment, vision and the core competence are the important factors for a
successful overseas venture,” says Nitin Shah, MD, Allied Digital. “There is
no businessman in this world who will not willingly take stake in your company
if you are capable,” he stressed.

Building a brand can be
anything but easy, “Wipro has a good brand presence in the country, but it is
struggling to build a brand outside India. The challenges are very big,” said
Nitin. Opportunities to start overseas business are galore. Large service
providers in other markets always look at India for meaningful partnerships.

At the same time, not
all markets are easy to enter. Sanjiv feels entering the US or the European
markets cane be an uphill task, whereas countries like Yemen, Malaysia, etc are
relatively a cake walk. “In the domestic market, we may be big, but in the US
we are a small fry as we to face competition from large solutions providers,”
said Sanjiv.

Entering a market with
the lure of dollar is may not be good idea. It is true that there was a price
advantage. That is the reason Infosys did well. They may not continue to do well
now, added the panelist.

If you are looking to
jump start your business, it is better to take the MoU or joint venture
approach. The session concluded with the panelists calling out solutions
providers to build a brand India abroad.

Keynote
address by Jitendra Kulkarni, CEO, Redington Congratulating DQ Channels for
hosting the Summit, Jitendra remarked that the summit has come at an apt time,
when solutions providers have begun to play a key role as an interface for
customer in the world of IT products and services.

The solutions provider
is driven by the large domestic SMB market, says Jitendra Kulkarni, CEO,
Reddington. Additionally most vendors prefer the channel model than going
directly, which has helped more and more solution providers grow. Besides,
several new technologies are evolving, which the vendor feels solution providers
are best equipped to reach out to customer with the technological advancements.

Another factor that is
driving local solutions providers is the absence of big solutions providers from
abroad. For most US companies India is still a small dot on the world map. “Or
probably they do not have the appetite to work beyond their geographies,” reasons Jitendra. Managed services and mobile applications are
few other areas with lot of opportunities for channel partners, as this is in a
nascent state but definitely a growing one.

While the opportunities
are many, along comes the challenge. Jitendra says solutions providers should
identify a niche and enter at the right time.

“Customers look at solutions provider as an interface to learn about new
technologies, and hence the second most important challenge is to keep pace with
the technology changes,” he said.

A continuous challenge
for solution providers has been to attract and retain quality people. “This is
very important because customers do not like to see a new face every time they
have a problem. The comfort level of that particular customer is the best with
someone who has attended to them in the past,” he informs.

Adressing the
solutions providers, Jitendra said that there are many solutions providers who
do not bother to even understand the customer's requirement before making a
proposal. “To become successful, solutions providers should spend lot of time
understanding the customer before making any proposal,” he says.

Mergers
and Acquisitions

Panelists: RK Malhotra (OA Compserve) and Sudhir Sarma (Network
Solutions)


Moderator: Asim Raina

Talking about the success it achieved in the market by getting acquired by a
large company like IBM, Sudhir Sarma said, every company either burnout or
succeed when it reaches a certain size. “Our entire business was focused on
entire market place with a solutions approach and hence we could succeed,”
said Sudhir.

According to Sudhir,
there are three sources to raise funds, it is either through a venture capital,
or an IPO or by a merger and acquisition. “There are positive and negative
sides to each approach. However, If you do a VC funding, there is pressure from
the VC to go in their direction. In the case of an IPO you are answerable to the
shareholders. That leaves you with the option of getting acquired by some other
company,” opined Sudhir.

Normally, companies
appoint investment bankers when they are up for sale to some large company.
“But in our case we were approached by large companies fortunately. The
proposition was good and we accepted the offers,” added Sudhir.

Talking about the
dangerous of partnerships, RK Malhotra said, “One has to take a calculated
risk in a partnership while factoring the growth of the company.” It is good to have a partnership
for going overseas, as it helps to grow faster compared to the growth it can
have within the country, says Malhotra.

“If you have the right
technical people and the right processes, and if you have developed your own
tools, it is much easier to go overseas,” says Sudhir.

Best
HR Practices

Panelists: Devendra Taneja (PC Solutions) and N Jagannathan (Fourth
Dimension)


Moderator: Vinita Bhatia

A common human resource
problem that every solutions provider encounters is that of attrition.
“Attrition is here to stay,” says Devendra Taneja. “The only difference
will be the level of severity. Young people want spending power they are not
bothered about which company they are working for,” points out Jaganath.

According to Jaganath,
what is more important that getting people is getting the right people, and even
more important is retaining them.

The panelist gave tips
on how training, profit share, special incentive can solve attrition to a large
extent. “Scaling up people to the next level if the person deserves also help
in retaining good people in the company,” added Devendra.

The panelists also
answered queries from the audience on how it makes a difference to get the HR
process right to manage it employee.

Fund
Management

Panelists: Ranjan Chopra, CMD, Team Computers and TG Ramesh, Director,
Precision Group


Moderator: Nelson Johny

In a very brief session,
both the panelists got the audience asking for more tips on fund management,
while Ranjan and Ramesh unleashed their expertise on fund management. Ranjan
shared how he started his company with a small amount, but went on to grow big
by the maintaining proper balance sheet and build the books consciously.

Ramesh touched up on the
importance of working capital and how it is important to bridge it for smooth
functioning of the business.

All the session were
followed by small bouts of Quiz. Not just that, the sponsor like Xerox, Motorola
and Netcore, made the most out of the event by giving presentation on their
products to the high-profiled gathering of solution providers.

To make the event more
promising, DQ Channels also arranged Kapil Dev Singh, Country Manager, IDC India
to present some facts and figures on the IT industry. “The IT industry is
changing from a single industry to two new groups,” he said. “One that is a
matured one and the other that is evolving and growing,” he added.

DAY
2

After a hectic deliberating the ills and travails of the solution
provider industry, it was time to look at the ills that plague or body and soul.

Hectic and almost
frantic pace of today's lifestyle has changed the lifestyles in an imaginable
way. Stress, tension and pressure have become a part of our daily life. These
often lead to adverse effect on the human psyche and physique.

The second day's
session at the Solutions Providers Summit started off with Yogacharya Avneesh
Tiwari's discourse attempting to bring succor to every participant's life by
presenting an array of knowledge and yoga activities that charged everyone up.

Participants were not
short of queries on how to look at life from a different perspective, and the
Yogacharya had a solution to each one of them.

Trained under renowned
Swami Satyanandji for years, Yogacharya Tiwari went on to the holy city of
Hrishikesh to train under Swami Yogeshwaranandji. For the past 40 years he has
dedicated his life to Yoga. He runs a yoga research and training institute in
Jabalpur, India.

Yogacharya has
conducting several successful experiments with yoga to demonstrate its
rejuvenating and therapeutic powers, especially for people suffering from
ailments like diabetes, heart diseases and stress.

After, the rejuvenation
it was time to call it a day, and the delegates and participants returned to
life pepped up and focused.

NELSON JOHNY

(nelsonpj@cybermedia.co.in)