An open letter to TAIT

Dear TAIT Member Friends, We all should work towards making our TAIT a
vibrant and happening entity. Three lessons that I would like to share with you
and like to learn along with all of you are explained below.

Lesson 1: How our Association can improve our city?

(From the Information Technology people of Bangalore)

The entire Information Technology industry of Bangalore put forward their
protest to the Chief Minister of Karnataka. If the infrastructure, the utilities
and the pathetic condition of the city of Bangalore was not going to be urgently
improved, the IT industry would collectively boycott the prestigious forthcoming
IT Exhibition at Bangalore. This news was covered in all the electronic and
print media. The government responded immediately and favorably. The Chief
Minister was compelled to commit his plan of action with time deadlines and
regular weekly reviews of the progress. And the review committee would have
representatives from the IT industry. And further support was also committed by
the central government from New Delhi. The proposed boycott was called off.

The condition of Mumbai is also appalling. What are we doing? Do not
under-estimate the power of protest, especially when it is from a collective
body like TAIT.

Lesson 2: Shining examples from Medical Stores Association

(From Rajiv Mehta, Innovative Enterprise)

There is a strong and successfull association of Medical Retailers. This has
been functioning for last many years. The unity amongst their members is
phenomenal. Their association has got citywise, statewise and national chapters.
Every big and small pharmaceutical company reveres this association. And all the
members themselves always abide by the decisions of the association. Examples:
(a) When "Band-Aid" from J&J was boycotted by all Medical
Retailers for low margins structure to dealers by J&J. So effective was this
boycott that new brands with higher margins to dealers were introduced by other
pharmaceutical manufacturers and were developed to become successfull. (b) When
a major pharma company supplied material directly to a hospital, the products of
this pharma company were boycotted by the dealers. This pharma company was so
rattled that it gave a written apology to the association and also written
assurance that in future it would not do any direct sales. But the association
lifted the boycott with warning to the pharma company only after it paid the
margin to the dealer and a penalty to the association. I understand that the
penalty amount paid by this major pharmaceutical company to the association was
Rs 25 lakh.

Lesson 3: Competing IT Dealers should Collaborate

(From Viren Reshamwala, Millenium Business Machines)

When a customer is getting dealers to compete, do not come down in prices
below what is viable. Always respect the customer. But the other dealer is not
your enemy. When you are bringing down your price, not only do you hurt the
other dealer but you also hurt yourself. We need to have trust and co-operation
between dealers especially when we face each other on the field. Viren has
effectively suggested that without the customer knowing about it, dealers should
share with each the pricing and other information as the case develops. Thus the
customer can be happy even without us committing harakiri.

It's very easy to speak or write about such things. But the real challenge
is putting it to practice. And that requires all of us to work on it, real hard.
Let's make a beginning in this direction. And do keep writing back.

We really appreciate the honorary services of all the TAIT board members.
Just as an example, we find Chetan Shah of Xpress Computers giving very good
quality inputs to TAIT. Keep it up. Also, the professional services of CW
Kadwadkar and our auditor Alok Pansari are highly appreciable.

Warm regards, Rajiv Sethi, Liberty Automation Systems Mumbai