All India bandh hits the dealers

Channel
partners
and IT dealers saw an adverse effect on business because of
the All India bandh called by the opposition parties on Monday, July 5.
This effect was all the more acute in those states where
there was a complete shutdown.

Pawanjeet
Singh
Bakshi of IT Arcade based out of Ludhiana said, “The bandh
has affected the way of life, and from a business perspective, it has
hit our normal routine of transactions. I am into selling of IT
accessories and would say that my estimated loss would be anywhere
between Rs 5,000-10,000.” Echoing this, Manish Tiwari of Galaxy
Infotech, based out of Jabalpur said, “In my view the financial
implications of this bandh would be to the tune of Rs 10,000 on my
business.” Siliguri-based Polaris Infotech's Suresh Bhagat
quantified the loss to his earnings, “I sell desktop PCs, laptops
and other memory products both by reselling as well as through retail
customer walk-ins. I make an average of Rs 5 lakh daily and so the
hit to my turnover would be to a similar amount.”

Vikas
Doshi
of Rajkot-based Plus One Infotech shut shop but continued to
provide service support for his customer base. “I sell PCs to
retail customers and also offer support services. I did not operate
my outlet but I did support services for those customers who had
complaints with their systems. I get an average of 10 to 15 walk-ins
daily and of those around two would be the conversion rate which
means that if I were to put the loss suffered in numbers, it would be
anywhere around Rs 40,000-50,000,” said Doshi. In Mumbai also,
there was a complete shutdown of business operations. One of those
affected was Sanjay Dhokad of Computer Interactive Systems. “My
company provides maintenance services to customers for their IT
hardware. Usually we get around 25-30 service calls in a day but
because of one day's loss of work, we had a deluge of calls to
handle on Tuesday. It was around 50-55 calls and that was more than
we could manage. We are still to service some of those calls and the
potential loss to us was around 10,000 rupees. Thankfully, we will be
able to recover and make up for that,” said Dhokad. Secunderabad-based
IT Park Acer Mall's P. Reshu shared his views,
“I have an average business of Rs 2 lakh from retail and so
certainly the impact on business was bad and spoiled things for us.
We had to hold stocks for another day and also clearing cheques got
delayed. This is not something that I appreciate at all.”