COMPUTEX’06 TAIPEI has thrown a very good light on the Indian channel market as to how the Indian channel is going global. From the perspective of the Indian channel visitors to the expo, perhaps this year has set a record for India as the battery of visitors included eminent IT personalities like Paras Shah from Neoteric, Dushyant Mehta of Mediaman, Champak Gurjar of Maxtone, Akhilesh from Fortune Marketing’s, Pitush from Mediatek and KPS Narayanan of Chemoplast, among others.
Of course, for COMPUTEX’06 it was a record turnout of 30,200 overseas buyers and professional traders who paid a visit to the five-day show at the Taipei World Trade Center, which is a figure up by 7.8 per cent compared to the last year.
This is an established fact that the IT channel business in India is a sustainable one unlike some predictions that the OEM market will outplay the channel. The fact is that the market in India for IT is scaling up and scaling out and the OEMs pace to move along with the market pace is being stymied because of the time taken by the enterprises from preparing policy to implement it.
Secondly, for the channel market the Indian SMBs are a big pond where they can really fish on a sustainable basis. The SMB market in India is estimated to be in excess of Rs.1,000 crore and their contribution to the IT spending in the country is about 54 per cent. And, they are growing at about 20 per cent per annum. These enterprises are widely spread across the country. But the problem with these entities is that they are not equipped with adequate technology know-how, where the channel partners can play the role of consultants, apart from being product suppliers to them. The Indian channel is quite cognizant of this fact, but the upgradation they need to do, does not happen to the extent of the market expectations.
It might be for this reason that the PC essential vendors tend to pamper themselves for achieving their own business goals. For example, the schemes launched by the vendors engage the partners to such an extent that at the end of the day he feels contented with the margin he makes out of it. Gone are the days when the channel business was only banking upon margin. It is now time for value sales and chasing a bigger dream.
Sanjay Mohapatra
Editor
