DQ Week Mumbai holds first-ever Channel Awards

The DQ Week Mumbai announced the coveted Annual Channel Partner Awards for the western region, at the first annual awards function held at Mumbai’s Le Royal Meridien hotel. The awards function was held to celebrate the success of various channel partners in association with Philips, TVS Electronics and Ingram Micro India.

North India has approxima-tely 8,000 channel partners operating either as resellers, dealers, systems integrators, Value Added Resellers (VARs) or retailers. Infact, Mumbai alone has more than 2000 channel partners, with close to one-third in just Lamington Road, which is the largest IT market in the western region.

Until a few years ago, there was little media attention to this critical, emerging commu-nity. The DQ Week Mumbai, established in February 2003 and focused to a large extent on the information needs of local channel partners, has for the first time established the Annual Channel Awards for the western region. Adjudged by an eminent industry panel, these awards recognized the contri-butions of channel partners across 10 cities of west India.

In his opening remarks while welcoming the gathering of more than 300 channel partners, Shyam Malhotra, Editor-in-Chief, CyberMedia Publications, said, “This 40 week old baby has made its presence felt across the western region in a short period. The channels play an important role today, as it can be seen that the CyberMedia Group itself has two publica-tions dedicated to this commu-nity. This is the age of conver-gence as it can be seen today. There is Philips–traditionally a consumer electronics comp-any–has now moved aggre-ssively into the IT sector and there is TVS Electronics, which is from the industrial side, has also done the same. Today, on the same platform, there is Ingram Micro and these two companies.”

The awards function started with the best channel partners of cities other than Mumbai. For Aurangabad, the award went to Mainframe Computers. Desh Infotech was declared the best channel partner of Baroda. The award for Goa went to The Computer Shop.

For Nagpur, Mayur Compu-ters and Silver Systems jointly won the best channel partner award. Nashik saw Hi-Tech Computer Services and Nice Computers jointly winning the coveted award. Sudarshan Marketing won the best channel partner award for Rajkot. For Surat, the award went to Ria Computers.

For the city of Ahmedabad, the Best Retailer award was given to Third Wave Systems. In the System Integrator category, the award went to Sai InfoSystem and Real-Time Technologies bagged the Best Reseller award.

For Pune, Sujata Computers was given the Best Retailer award. Computer Information Technology and Monarch Technologies were jointly judged as the Best System Integrators. In the Reseller category, the award went jointly to Data

Care Corpora-tion and Radhika Automation.

The DQ Week awards for Mumbai had three catego-ries–Retailer, Systems Integra-tor and Reseller and each category had five nominations. While Cyber Citi bagged the Best Retailer award, Bell Computronics had to remain content with the runners up award in the Retailer category.

In the Systems Integration category, Allied Digital Services received the Best Systems Integrator award while the runner up award went to Ashtech Infotech. Wysetek Systems was given the Most Promising System Integrator award.

There were three awardees in the Reseller category also. Arihant Computers won the Best Reseller award and Real Time Computers was adjudged the runner-up in the same category. The Most Promising Reseller award went to Kay Kay Overseas.

The winners were chosen by a very eminent jury comprising of Atul Rawal, VP (Business Development), Ingram Micro India Pvt Ltd; and Sanjay Maheshwari, Head (Distribut-ion), Philips India Ltd. They took into account a number of parameters including credibi-lity, financial strength, sales, service attitude, long term commitment, etc.

The awards were given away by Shyam Malhotra, Editor-in-Chief, CyberMedia Publications; Atul Rawal, VP (Business Development), Ingram Micro India; S Magesh, Head (Chan-nels), TVS Electronics; Ankan Biswas, GM, Philips India; PG Kamath, GM, Lexmark India; and Sanjay Maheshwari, Head (Distribution), Philips India.

More than 300 top channel partners from Mumbai as well as other major cities of the west, gathered at the gala awards night.

The awards function concluded with cocktails and dinner.

DQW News Bureau