Bharti Teletech gets aggressive in distribution space

Bharti Teletech, a company that was erstwhile better known as a telephone
instrument manufacturer, is getting aggressive about its role as a distributor.
While it forayed into the distribution space in 2005 with Blackberry and
Motorola mobiles, it is only now that the company is getting bullish about this
business vertical and exploring its different avenues.

Plans to go pan-India with its range of IT products and establish its presence in the top 100 cities by August this year

Sunil Goyal Bharti Teletech

Sunil Goyal, CEO, Bharti Teletech shared that it was only six months back
when the company started thinking about positioning itself as a distribution
house. “Before we were just leveraging on the Beetel brand and selling consumer
products in telecom. Now we plan to go pan-India with our extensive range of IT
products and will do so step-by-step. We have already started our foray into the
top 100 cities in May this year and will have established our presence in these
cities by this August,” stated Goyal.

Asked why Bharti Teletech decided to focus on distribution, Goyal said, “We
did a study on Beetel and found that it stands for dependability. That gave us
the confidence to leverage the brand and get into this vertical. Our belief at
Bharti Teletech is that adoption of technology will grow. To encash on the
portfolio of growing technology, we are looking at those who want to develop
their products but don't have a direct presence in India. Not to mention, the
consumption of technology is very fast here. Our first exposure to the scenario
was with mobile phones.”

The company was earlier focusing exclusively on system integrator (SI)
partners with its products like Polycom and Sharp and Sanyo projectors.
Currently Bharti Teletech has relations with 200 SIs of which about 120-130 are
billing with them every month.

“We have a huge portfolio for SIs and keep enhancing it. These are products
that SMEs, large corporate and government need and we can offer them the same.
We added LCD panels to the list, as offering complete boardroom solutions is the
key. We have Panasonic, Samsung and Sharp brands of LCDs. Even Logitech products
are targeted at the corporate segment and catered to through our SIs,” said
Goyal.

In the retail segment, an area the company has just recently got into, Bharti
Teletech has added Transcend products. “Transcend will be sold across all
verticals-corporate, IT channel and retail channel. This is where we have
multiple partners-500 across the country,” divulged Goyal.

He added that Bharti Teletech's focus is consumer IT-branded products. Large
retail formats (LFRs) will be another focus area. Though Goyal made their SI
plans evident, he refused to divulge much about the company's mass retail
channel initiatives, citing that it was an area they were just getting into and
were still in the process of finalizing details.

Elaborating about the kind of channel partners that they are looking to align
with, Goyal said, “The kind of SIs we are looking to add to our network include
those with sound knowledge about various technologies, have the ability to
service, have good relations with resellers and consumers and financial
strength.”

Speaking about their channel policies, Goyal added that they would be
different for each vertical. For the corporate channel the distributor currently
has a scheme running this quarter on all product categories and the distribution
house is also conducting regular regional meets for its channel.