Elicon India undergoes a complete makeover

Elicon India, a company trading in IT products and belonging to the Lanbit
Group, has been undergoing a makeover since the past two months. It has been in
exis-tence for the last two years one of the first steps started 10 days back,
which was appointing Ker-man Rana as GM (Operations) for Lanbit. He would also
be respon-sible for Elicon India. Rana was heading Philips India corporate
division for its monitors and also heading Viewsonic India when it was active in
the Indian market.

When contacted, Rana said, "Elicon has been in existence for the last
two years but has been active only in trading–that is purchasing from
distributors and providing the channels. But now it will move into identifying
the right distribution product, make new tie-ups overseas and to open branches.
It will first start distribution of motherboards and cabinets. I can’t reveal
the brand name as we are still in talks with them. We have set up branches at
Pune and Ahmedabad and in the next two months Delhi and Chennai would be put
up."

He added, "In this year we are looking at setting up seven to eight
branches which would include metros and smaller cities. Presently we have 50 to
60 channel players in Mumbai and Pune but by the end of this year we would at
least look at 300 to 400 players."

Lanbit would also work on revitalizing its brand in the Indian market.
Presently Lanbit has its range of networking products and also digital cameras.
Rana also made it clear that Elicon would not be distributing pro-ducts, which
would compete with Lanbit. The networking ven-dor would be co-nducting train-ing
and certifi-cation programs for channels, th-ereby increasing its reach.

In todays times, when distribution tiers are disappearing, Elicon chose to
revamp its strategy is not really surprising. "Distribution channel will
never disappear but the layers would definitely reduce as the middle level will
either move out or upgrade themselves. Many of the players at the lower tiers
may also have to consolidate. Therefore, we thought this was the right time as
WTO is also coming up by 2005 and duties have also dropped considerably,"
pointed out Rana.

In fact, Elicon has already started making its presence felt as it
participated in a big way at Pune CMDA’s IT Expo 2004 displaying a lot of
high-end products from Samsung, Altec Lansing etc. The display also attracted
the Samsung representative to the stall who was seen trying his best to rope in
Elicon as one of its elite partners.

Nancy Sudheer

Mumbai