Awaiting a landmark judgement

Mumbai-based Association of System Integrators and Retailers in Technology (ASIRT) invited to speak, Dipak Mortale, President, and Nanded IT Association, the small 40 member association that has taken on Government of Maharashtra with a writ petition in High Court to ensure Government follows its own IT policy declared in 2009 that frees IT industry no LBT, no Octroi, or local body tax for IT industry across the state. The judgement on the case is expected in a few weeks.

Mortale had also shared several direct, easy to avail of amazing financial benefits of registering as ITU-IT Unit way back in March at FITAM meeting.

Kshitij Kotak, president, ASIRT said, "Members were bewildered learning of benefits that could have been long availed and not due to ignorance. Members were livid with Government's inexplicable act of making investment encouraging, industry friendly policies but keeping such an important policy under wraps."

Mortale updated members on some significant benefits that allow IT companies to be set up in residential area, save almost 50% on electricity by availing residential or industrial rate and duty exemption on total invoice currently being charged at 10%; concessional rate for land in MIDC; 80% refund on investment made in setting up IT units and even refund on VAT. He also spoke of cluster setup where members can come together and set up common purpose units such as data centres or any others and avail grants from government.

Mortale further mentioned that central government enterprises are mandated to procure 20% of their requirements of IT from MSME units and are supposed to file report for having done so; a huge huge opportunity given the government and semi-government enterprises spend on IT.

Kotak added, "It should be noted that ASIRT has been working hard petitioning with BJP and ministers of current NDA government; and bureaucracy at various levels to raise this mandated spend to be allocated at 50% from Small and Medium units."

Mortale also explained the procedure of ITU registration that is simple, requires negligible efforts and can be completed in less than 2 days that makes IT companies entitled to avail these benefits.

Kotak said, "This is an awesome news not only for ASIRT members but also for the entire System Integrator and Retailer (who invariably provide end-user services) fraternity of IT industry across Maharashtra."

Following Mortale's great presentation, Suneel Agarwal's conducted his 2nd training seminar on Planning, Roadmap and Strategy. Agarwal, though perceived as Brand Guru is a 360 degree advisor on positioning, strategy, marketing, team building among other business building management aspects. Agarwal has promised to work out a consultancy model exclusively to suit ASIRT members as well as for his full-fledged training workshops.

ASIRT Platinum Sponsors BSA, were supportive of ASIRT as always Gouri Thounaojam, Senior Manager BSA, announced a fantastic scheme exclusively for ASIRT members to sponsor $1500 training and certification to be eligible SAM auditors. BSA, in association with Summet George, Inside Territory manager from Microsoft also brought an insightful session on much awaited Azure Cloud Services and its new capabilities that can get 5 member SME up within minutes and also scale up to 5 Lakh IT users. ASIRT extracted promise from George to arrange Azure training session for ASIRT members in coming week.