Aditya Infotech denies closure of its Lucknow operations

Days after uncertainty clouded Delhi-based Aditya Infotech's Lucknow operations, promoters of the company have denied any kind of closure of its Lucknow operations. Aditya Khemka, MD, Aditya Infotech, added that the company is even going ahead with its sales team expansion plans. "We don't know who has started this talk but don't have any closure plans. On the contrary, we are recruiting two more sales guys for the Lucknow office. We do not have any expansion plans as far as other UP regions are concerned, and for now Lucknow is the only base for
Aditya."

Sources close to the Lucknow reseller market claim that marred by a rise in the number of replacement related problems, Aditya Infotech is on the verge of closing down its Lucknow operations. "Aditya will be gone soon, they have a large number of replacement related problems and this is the prime reason for them to leave the Lucknow market," said a leading channel partner of
Lucknow.

However, the company denies this claim and Vikram Jaiswal, Lucknow-based representative for Aditya Infotech, said that there is no problem with the usual business. "We don't have any plans to close our Lucknow operations and it is only against two resellers that we want to take legal action. We are here for long term business and all this talk about us leaving the city market is not at all true."

Lucknow-based resellers claim that, initially the company used to give credit to resellers for a period of 15 days and some days back they stopped giving credit and started dealing in cash business only. "New policy of Aditya says that no credit should be given to dealers and all the transactions should be done on strictly cash basis. This becomes a big issue for some resellers as they usually work on credit," pointed out a prominent Lucknow reseller.

In its bid to address the issue of default payments, Aditya Infotech is about to start legal action against two Lucknow resellers--Adhaar Computers and Computer Vision. "No distributor can work without payments and that's what has happened in this case. We have already given notice to both of them and now we will start legal operations against them to get our money. Since the month of March their cheques are getting bounced from the bank and now its high time for us to proceed with the legal operations," explained
Jaiswal.

Lucknow-based resellers worries are fuelled by the fact that about a year back Mumbai-based Visualan Technologies closed down its Lucknow operations. "I still remember that Visualan went off from Lucknow last year and packed up its bags in a matter of days because of some replacement issues. They did this even after giving in writing that they will not vanish from the market, so we feel insecure by such acts of distributors. Now we are going to decide about these issues on a broad platform of our association. We have suggested that all the big distributors should give the association a bank guarantee or FDR before starting their operations, so that a reseller will not loose its money when it comes to replacement related issues," explained Gurmeet Singh Saluja, President, Lucknow Computer Vyapar
Mandal.

Commenting on the issue of bank guarantee, Jaiswal added that they are ready for anything, which is being done on a universal basis. "We will do it if all the other distributors also start doing it. After all it will encourage healthy business and that's what we want."

Aditya Infotech is a national distributor for vendors like Asustek, Compex, Microtek International, Pinnacle Systems, ViewSonic etc and the company has a marketing network of more than 1,100 resellers spread all over the country.

Zia Askari