Vendors Not Keen On Upcountry Locations

That was the overriding emotion at the Allahabad IT Panchayat. Partners
insisted that while vendors dump goods with them, they did not provide any
after-sales service. The absence of representatives of big distributors also
added to their woes

The IT Panchayat was held this time in the city of holy Sangam in association
with Hitachi Data System, Amconics, ICICI Bank and Tutis Technologies. The
panchayat made a pit stop in the city at the invitation of the Allahabad
Computer Dealers Welfare Association and saw a sangam of nearly 80 channel
partners. The Allahabad chapter of the Panchayat witnessed some serious
discussions of the problems plaguing the partners in the upcountry region and
also some candid talk by the partners.

Shivshankar Singh, President, Allahabad Computer Dealers Welfare Association
(ACDWA); Manish Mehrotra of Tritech Enter­prises and Siddharth Sharma of Konark
Com­puters represented the panel in the discussion, while Raheenul Hasan, Area
Sales Manager-Components, Redington and Updesh Singh, Senior Sales Associate,
Ingram Micro represented the distributors. The discussion was moderated by
Shivangi Yadav, Executive Editor, The DQ Week.

(L-R) The panel included Shivshankar Singh, President, Allahabad Computer Dealers Welfare Association; Manish Mehrotra of Tritech Enterprises and Siddharth Sharma of Konark Computers

Not enough support

Starting the discussion, Shivshankar said that there were vendors who were
not backing up channel partners in the upcountry cities. Explaining the same he
said, “While vendors are happily dumping stuff on us, there is no after-sales
service provided by them in the upcountry region.” Speaking in the same vein,
Rakesh Srivastava of City Compac Systems said, “Even if a laptop or machine
shows some problem, we have to take it to Lucknow, because there is absolutely
no service center here.”

According to Mehrotra, other major problems that partners in upcountry face
are the DoA and short shipment. Explaining the situation, Mehrotra said, “While
most vendors might have a policy on DoA, there is no policy on short shipment.”
Replying to the same, Hassan of Redington said, “The distributors have no say in
the DoA cases. However, I do agree that as of now there is no short shipment
policy with vendor or distributor, and that this is something which also needs
to be looked into.”

Raising the issue of missing parts in packaged and sealed goods, Sharma of
Konark Computers said, “There have been instances where people have opened
sealed packages and computer parts were found missing from the machine, and no
one is ready to take the liability.”

Replying to this, Hasan said, “The distributor is not solely responsible for
this. There are many people involved in the entire process. Problem rest with at
the distributor, the courier person, the sub-distributor or channel partner's
person in the warehouse. So the accountability has to be fixed first. As of now,
no one has a policy on the same."

The event saw a participation of nearly 80 channel partners	(L-R) Updesh Singh, Senior Sales Associate, Ingram Micro and Raheenul Hasan, Area Sales Manager-Components, Redington

Price undercutting

Many partners raised the issue of price undercutting that is prevalent in
the market. They opined that the vendor or the distributor should have one
standard price for products in the market. Deepak Aggarwal of Matrix said, “The
price undercutting is such that sometimes the difference between the printed
price and the selling price is almost Rs 3,000. So with everyone giving a
reduced price, the customer ultimately thinks that he could have gotten a better
deal. This hits our credibility.”

Replying to this Shivshankar said, “Price undercutting has become a fact of
life, and the prices have come down so much now that there is

no undercutting left.” However, since most of the channel partners present
vociferously still pursued the subject and wanted the association to get
involved, both Singh and Mehrotra agreed that they will consider making a
committee to look into the matter and set prices on which all partners will
operate. Strict action will be taken against those who do not adhere to the
same.

The evening had presen­tations by Sanjeev Singh, Relationship
Manager-Northern Region, Hitachi Data Systems and Ashish Priyadarshi, Branch
Manager-Lucknow, Amconics.

DQC News Bureau