"The Only Way To Go From Here Is Up"

I took this motivational quote from a coffee coaster at a solution provider's
office. Coincidentally, this reflects the sentiment of the industry at large.

Dataquest recently revealed the results of its 20th Top 20 annual survey and the
verdict is that the Indian IT industry has crossed the $50 billion milestone,
recording a 32 percent growth in rupee terms. Hip Hip Hurray!

Ok, let's mellow that celebration a bit because a bulk of that business came
from export earnings of Rs 1,53,744 crore while domestic market stood for Rs
73,125. Nonetheless, the good thing is that the domestic business has been
growing consistently at 27 percent for three years now.

This is very significant because who else drives the domestic business but
the good old channel-which includes you. I am sure if you compute your growth
figures for the past three years, you will find that your company has registered
a growth which would be more or less parallel to the one mentioned above.

There were several well known but never spoken truths that came out in black
and white in the Dataquest survey and one of them was about the rising
popularity of Linux, which has now got 21 percent of the systems software market
as against the 47 percent that market leader Microsoft Windows has. Another
product that is also gaining ground is the laptop, which is now one of every
five computers sold in the country.

Similarly, laser multi functions devices grew 69 percent during the year
while inkjet and dot matrix printer sales dropped. Liquid crystal display
monitors sales increased 153 percent as sales of the traditional bulkier CRT
monitors dropped, underlining that inkjet, DMPs and CRTs are on their way out.

Networking product sales grew 32 percent to Rs 5,543 crore with structured
cabling (42 percent) and WLAN (44 percent) coming through as the high growth
areas. The data storage sector, comprising storage hardware, secondary storage
and storage software, grew by 47 percent to reach Rs 1,561 crore making it the
highest percentage growth amongst all product segments in the domestic market.

Like I said, these are well known facts, but now they have the figures to
substantiate them. Another significant aspect emerged in another such survey
that was released around the same time.

The MAIT Annual Industry Performance Review for 2006-07 clearly pointed out
that business from the metros is stagnating, if not sliding down, while the
smaller cities are emerging as key markets. A case in point is server sales that
declined by five percent in the four metros-Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata-and
by 53 percent in the class next cities-Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune.
But it grew 23 percent in other smaller cities across the country.

I am pleased to have MAIT underline this fact, because it is precisely what
DQ Channels has been trumpeting for all these months. If you want to grow, look
beyond the metros.

This is the reason we have been promoting the IT Panchayast in the smaller
cities, where we see the yearning for IT adoption but it is marred by lack of
proper knowledge and access to the right sources for buying products and getting
services. A year since we embarked on the IT Panchayat, I can confidently say
that we have managed to put dealers in these C-class cities in touch with the
right distributors for growing their business.

In the meantime, the time is drawing close for the annual DQ Channels Silver
Club, which ranks the top 50 distributors and solutions providers in India.
Forms for the survey are available within this magazine and have also been sent
out to a cross section of partners in the country. Soon the number crunching
will begin to see who will make it to the coveted Silver Club list.

If you think you have what it takes to make it to this elite group, then fill
up the form immediately. It will be nice to see some shakeup in the Silver Club
as well.

vinita bhatia

vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in