Bhavnagar dealers to hold IT Expo in October

Association of Bhavnagar Computer Dealers (ABCD) is planning to conduct its annual IT expo after a gap of two years on October 12, 2003. Last year due to the Gujarat riots, ABCD could not hold the expo.

This year the association has planned to invite vendors to the expo. Therefore instead of the dealers setting up stalls it will be the direct presence of the vendors. Said Govind Bhetaria, President, ABCD, "The decision of inviting vendors to set up its stalls will help the channel as sales would happen through the channel itself. Therefore, inviting vendors will not hold against the channels."

ABCD has not decided on to invite all the vendors present in India. However, it was not able to share the names as it was too early and they were still holding talks with the vendors.

The association has also planned to invite neighboring associations based in Gujarat and also MAIT. Besides working on the event, ABCD is also working on a number of channel issues.

ABCD has decided to approach vendors to provide octroi paid products in Bhavnagar. "All the vendors provide octroi paid products in seven districts in Gujarat. Therefore we have now even approached the Gujarat Corporation to look into this matter. Canon, Wipro and LG are providing octroi paid products presently," pointed out
Bhetaria.

Bhavnagar dealers have to pay an octroi of three percent on all MNC products they bring in from neighboring cities. While bringing in products sent out of the city for repairs or replacement, an additional three percent has to be paid as octroi. For the past one year, ABCD has been requesting various MNC vendors to supply
octroi-paid products.

"We have even spoken to vendors like HP, Intel, Seagate, Samsung and AMD. This was about a year ago. But they have not yet got back to us," said
Bhetaria.

In most cases, the Bhavnagar dealers have no alternative but to pay octroi for MNC products. However, in the case of Samsung, the vendor's competing brand LG offers octroi-paid products. As a result, dealers are now switching to LG products, because of which Samsung's business in the city is reported to be suffering.

Claimed Bhetaria, "Samsung's business is already suffering because of their policies. Earlier they had a 30 percent share in the city's business. This has now gone down considerably."

Market sources, however, added that Samsung presently provides octroi-paid products to neighboring cities like Baroda, Surat, Rajkot and Ahmedabad mainly because the volume of business is high. When the volume of business increases in Bhavnagar, the vendor would provide octroi-paid products. Vendors like LG can afford to provide octroi-paid products because it has a regional distributor.

Meanwhile, the association has taken up the issue of defaulters with its Chamber of Commerce and resolved it. Many of the ship breaking companies had become defaulters in
Bhavnagar.

Nancy Sudheer