“We want to be known as a strong value added distribution company"–Ashok Kumar

How robust is your channel network? With how many SI/VAR partners do you operate?
RAH Infotech has been into the reselling business since 2005 and we have over 250 SI/VARs and tier-1 SIs with whom we do business. Most of our partners do regular business with us and our channel base and their engagement is growing every year. In 2010, we decided to change the nature of our business and become a VAD, to provide more and more value-added solutions to our channel partners. We are very carefully adding solutions that can provide good margins to our partners and have a great demand among end customers. Our distribution focus will be around networking and security solutions.

Please elaborate on your partner expansion plans.
As of now we are looking at consolidating our channel base rather than expanding it. We already have a strong channel base, but what we were lacking is a strong and comprehensive bouquet of solutions to offer our partners. We have very aggressively worked in this direction and brought the #1 European UTM brand--Astaro to the Indian market last year, as their sole distributor in India. In 2011, you will see RAH adding more such value solutions to its offerings.

What is your product and solution offering?
RAH Infotech is fast establishing itself as a networking and network security-focused value added distribution company. Providing innovative, good quality products at affordable prices to our partners/end customers and backing them with great support is our commitment to our customers.

What are the new trends in networking solutions? What are the market challenges in solution deployment/adoption, and how are you responding to them?
Networking business is becoming a commodity business with reducing margins. The end customer is well aware of the all the competing brands and is dictating the prices. This is putting tremendous pressure on partner margins and partners are unable to come out with compelling differentiators. The value proposition that a partner may be able to offer is declining day by day. Multiple partners are working on same opportunities since skill set level for such requirements have become very common. The best way to come out of this situation is to focus more on an integrated solution selling approach rather than push boxes. We are helping our partners design end to end solutions with various networking and security solutions combined together, to form a compelling value proposition. Also, we are working with some of our partners to offer these solutions on an opex model rather than capex.

Please share some insights on WAN-based solutions with voice/data integration for the enterprise sector. Who are your major clients in this domain?
Everyone with a dedicated WAN connection is implementing some kind of voice over IP (VoIP) solution these days. The setup process is too easy, the cost too low, and the quality of service too high to ignore this application of your data channels. SMB/SMEs are the biggest markets for this kind of an application.

What are the adoption trends in routers and switches rental in India? Are there any price pain points or bottlenecks?
Enterprises have slowly started opting for a rental model for their routing and switching requirements. This gives them liberty to get rid of the maintenance and support headaches of the hardware. There is still some resistance from businesses for this kind of a model though, since the companies do not have an ownership of the hardware.

What is your organizational roadmap for 2012? What are the new implementations that you are handling? Also, kindly share some of your upcoming projects.
RAH Infotech is committed to making a strong presence in the IT distribution space. We have a clear cut channel focus plan in place and want to be known as a strong value added distribution company. In the next few months we will be rolling out some very strong channel programs for our resellers throughout the country. We are also committed to expand our reach across metros, and tier-2 and tier-3 cities as well. We are also in an advance stage of discussion with some niche vendors to launch their solutions in India. Our endeavor is to become a trusted VAD in IT network and network security distribution space.

What are your major focus areas? Will you go for diversifying your solutions/products portfolio? Please share your business strategy for FY 2011-12.
Year 2012 will see a major expansion for RAH in terms of reach of the company as well as increasing the product portfolio. We are very discerning in terms of choosing our OEM partners. We intend to partner with strong SMB, mid-market and enterprise OEMs with a clear cut service and support structure, a clear RMA process and a very strong channel focus. We want to give our partners great products with a great support and a good bottomline. We plan an organic growth for our organization with unwavering commitment to fundamentals and transparency with our partners and customers.