DQ Week felicitates reseller community with Channel Awards

The DQ Week Madras announced the coveted Annual Channel Partner Awards for the sout-hernregion at the second annual awards function held at Chennai’s GRT Grand Conven-tion Center. This event also marked the successful comple-tion of seven years by The DQ Week Madras. The awards function was held to celebrate the success of various channel partners in partnership with Ingram Micro India.

South India has approxima-tely 6,000 channel partners operating either as resellers, dealers, systems integrators, Value Added Resellers (VARs) or retailers. In fact, Chennai alone has more than 1,000 channel partners, with close to one-third in just Ritchie Street–unarguably south India’s lar-gest IT market place.

Until a few years ago, there was little media attention to this critical, emerging commu-nity. The DQ Week Madras, was established in 1996 and focu-sed to a large extent on the information needs of local cha-nnel partners, established the Annual Channel Awards in 2002. Adjudged by an eminent industry panel, these awards now recognize the contribu-tions of channel partners across 17 cities of south India.

In his opening remarks, while welcoming the gathering of more than 500 channel partners, Prasanto K Roy, Chief Editor, The DQ Week, said “The Channel Awards was instituted last year to recognize and merit the channel community where 80 percent of the IT business happens.”

The awards function started with the best channel partners of cities other than Delhi. For Belgaum, the award went to Heda Computers & Services. Guru Infosys was declared the best channel partner of Calicut. The award for Cochin went jointly to Aldous Glare Trade & Exports and Noveon Systems.

For Coimbatore, Bloom Elec-tronics won the best channel partner award for the second consecutive year. Erode saw Raghav Computers winning the coveted award–again for the second year running. Srishti Automation Pvt Ltd won the best channel partner award for Hubli. For Pondicherry, the award went to Auro Enterp-rises. For the city of Madurai, PC World and Pearl Computers jointly shared the best channel partner award. Avalon Data Products won the award for Tirunelveli. Riveraa Computers was given the award for
Trichy.

For Trivandrum, the award for the second year running went to Logtech Systems. Vel-lore Online Systems Pvt Ltd won the award for Vellore. Mist Computer Services was decla-red the winner for Vijayawada. Innovative Information Tech-nology of Visakhapatnam received the award for the sec-ond consecutive year.

For the city of Bangalore, the Best Retailer award was given to Karthik Business Machines. In the System Integrator cate-gory, the award went jointly to Connoiseur Electronics Pvt Ltd and Value Point Systems Pvt Ltd. And, Sogo Computers bag-ged the Best Reseller award for the second consecutive year.

For Hyderabad, Kishan Tra-ding Company and Orient Business Services Pvt Ltd were jointly given the Best Retailer award.

Microcare Computers Pvt Ltd and SV Electronics Ltd were jointly judged as the Best SI’s. In the Reseller category, the award went jointly to Cache Peri-pherals and Compage Com-puters Pvt Ltd.

The DQ Week awards for Chennai had three catego-ries–Retailer, SI and Reseller and each category had five nominations.

 A relatively new entrant into the Chennai market–Access–was given the Most Promising Retailer award. While SSS Systems bagged the Best Retailer award for the second year running, GBS Systems & Services had to remain content with the runners up award in the Retailer category.

In the Systems Integration category, CCS Infotech Ltd received the Best Systems Integrator award while the runner up award went to Pre-cision Techserve (P) Ltd.

There were three awardees in the Reseller category. Devraj Computers (P) Ltd and Sup-reme Computers jointly won the Best Reseller award. The runner up trophy went to Universal Micro Systems.

The winners were chosen by a very eminent jury com-prising of Abhinav Paracer, Deputy GM (Sales)–South, Ingram Micro India (P) Ltd; S Ganapathy Raman, Channel Account Manager, Intel India; and P Gowthaman, Branch Manager, TVS Electronics Ltd. They took into account a number of parameters includ-ing credibility, financial stre-ngth, sales, service attitude, long term commitment, etc.

The awards were given away by Shyam Malhotra, Editor-in-Chief, Cyber Publications; Pra-santo Roy, Chief Editor, The DQ Week; SP Rajguru, Acting Cou-ntry Head, Ingram Micro India; John Aravamuthan, Head (Sales & Service), TVS Electronics;
S Ganapathy Raman, Channel Account Manager, Intel India; and S Pattabiraman, Executive VP, HCL Peripherals.

More than 350 top channel partners from Chennai as well as other major cities of the south gathered at the gala awa-rds night. The awards function concluded with cocktails and dinner.

DQW News Bureau