AMD appoints Tech Pacific as its sub-distributor 

AMD has appointed Tech Pacific (India) Ltd as its sub-distributor for India.
As reported in the DQ Week issue dated Aug 1-7, the appointment of Tech Pacific
has come in a rather convoluted way.

Officially AMD has appointed Hagemeyer India Pvt Ltd--a large distributor of
semiconductor components--as its new national distributor in India. Hagemeyer
has in turn appointed Tech Pacific as its sub-distributor. For all practical
purposes, Tech Pacific will function as the national distributor, despite the
nomenclature of sub-distributor. Other AMD distributors in India include Avnet
Max, BBS Electronics and Intraco Technologies.

Announcing the appointment, Sanjeev Keskar, Country Manager (India), AMD Far
East Ltd, said, "AMD is pleased to work with Hagemeyer. This relationship
enhances our distribution channel network and helps AMD reach out to customers
across a large geographical area, more effectively."

This move will give a big boost to AMD's aim at increasing its market share
in India manifold. Its processors were available in India till now against
dollar payment only and the distributors never used to stock locally. All this
will change now. With the appointment of Tech Pacific, the processors will not
only be available against rupee payment but will also be stocked locally.

Keskar was quite bullish about this new development. "We will get to
reach out to the entire length and breadth of the country including B and C
class cities. Availability of products will also improve dramatically. This in
turn will benefit the resellers and VARs tremendously."

When contacted, K Jaishankar, CEO, Tech Pacific, sounded equally bullish
about this new development. "We have joined hands with AMD from a long-term
objective and we are committed to accomplish the same." He expects to
realize better margins by selling AMD processors vis-a-vis Intel processors.

It may be recalled that for all practical purposes, the relationship of Tech
Pacific with Intel is over. Though on paper it continues to be an Intel
distributor, in reality, it has all but stopped selling the same. Said
Jaishankar, "We are continuing to talk to Intel and we hope to have a
relationship going with them. Ideally, we would like to distribute both Intel as
well as AMD processors."

Talking about the plans on AMD, he said that initially Tech Pacific would
want to understand what it takes to become a successful processor distributor.
"The model of relationship with AMD might change depending upon how well we
understand this business".

As a first step, Tech Pacific will go about educating and developing the
market which in turn should boost its volumes. It would specifically target all
the major Indian OEMs to work on AMD platform. Said Jaishankar, "If we get
them going, it would give us very good volumes and at the same time boost AMD's
market share." And then corporates will be targeted, an area where AMD has
been traditionally weak in India.

DQW News Burea