BITOAA gets new team

Bhoj Information Technology and Office Automation Association (BITOAA)
recently held its annual elections. About 70 percent of the 140 members were
present at the time of the

appoint­ment of a new committee. As has been the tradition since the inception
of the associa­tion, the committee was appointed unani­mously.

Amitendra Shrivastava was appointed President; Sandeep Babbar as VP; Pradeep
Motwani as Secretary; Vikas Barve as Joint Secretary and Shail Sharma as
Treasurer.

Shrivastava has quite a few plans in store for the association. Sharing
details about a few, he said, “We have undertaken a new initiative in which we
have started meeting all members individually to understand their problems. A
list of these will then be compiled and then we will see how we can help in
enhancing the profitability of partners. Another thing we will aim to do is
generate a level of trust and increase under­standing among partners. This will
help in tackling the prevailing issues in the market such as payment defaults
etc.”

Apart from these partner-oriented initia­­tives, the new team will also take
up the issue of entry tax with the government. “Presently there is a one percent
entry tax on IT goods coming into Madhya Pradesh from outside. We want to make a
request to the government to abolish this tax as it makes us less competitive,”
expressed Shrivastava.

The next meeting of the association is on September 25 after which members
will get their calendar ready for the next year. “While all the regular
activities will go on as usual, such as the annual expo, this time we are
putting a thrust on technology seminars. These will be organized by us, and we
will be looking at roping in sponsors for the same,” he shared.

It may be recalled that last year BITOAA had announced its intention of
joining Confed-ITA, a body of 10 associations in Tamil Nadu, working for the
welfare of IT dealers. While talks were on with PN Prasad, President, Confed-ITA
for the same and BITOAA agreed to join the northern chapter of the body,
formally no steps were taken. This year it will be on the agenda of the new
team; to make BITOAA formally a part of the northern chapter of Confed-ITA.