Ingram Micro announces India team

Shows one face to customers and principals from may 1

Six months after the blockbuster Ingram Micro-Tech Pacific merger went
rolling, the top management at Ingram Micro has announced the closure of the
merger and the team for India operations. Integrating two major distribution
houses was no mean task. Working out their synergies, identifying the business
divisions through product groups, integrating the team and leveraging the
presence-it involved intense brain storming and close coordination.

K Jaishankar, the CEO of Tech Pacific India, took over the reigns as Managing
Dire-ctor of the merged entity, Ingram Micro India Pvt Ltd. S P Rajguru, who was
handling the operations at Ingram Micro India as COO, has been appointed as the
Senior Dire-ctor (Sales) in the new orga-nization, headquartered in Mumbai with
regional offices across India. "We have formed eight divisions within the
organization. These would be the growth engines for the company," said
Jaishankar. He also informed that each regional office, at least in the major
cities such as Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai would be assigned specific business
function with key people driving it from that region.

According to Jaishankar, M Mohapatra (Tech Pacific) would head the
Peripherals & Supplies Division, while Systems Business is to be handled by
Bimal Das (Tech Pacific). The Components Business is being divided into two-Component
1, focuses on Intel, Seagate and other hard disc drives and will be driven by
Hariharan Easwer (Ingram Micro). He will also be responsible for promoting the
in-house brand Vesta in the market. Component 2 is being headed by Ketan Doshi
(Tech Pacific). He will take care of accounts such Samsung, Microsoft and AMD.

The company has also divided its Value Business into two-Value 1 and Value
2. K Venkat (Tech Pacific) would head Value 1 focusing on the enterprise
servers, software and security products. He would also be responsible for the
tech support for the vendors, which is a promising segment. The Value 2 business
is to be managed by Sanjiv Mehrotra (Ingram Micro) who would be responsible for
networking portfolio, storage and Sun business.

The Consumer Business (mobile handsets) will be handled by Ravi Katial
(Ingram Micro), who will report to Rajguru. The Exclusive Divi-sion is under the
in-charge of Sanjay Achwal (Tech Pacific) who will manage the exclusive accounts
such as HCL, APC, Xe-rox and Targus, among others.

The Operations function is with S Ravindran (Ingram Micro) who is responsible
for warehouse, logistics and support (after-sales). Dipak Ashar (Tech Pacific)
will be the head of finance as CFO, while Atul Gaur (Tech Pacific) will manage
the credit. Alex Augu-stine (Ingram Micro) is the head of human resources, while
Aloysius Fernandes (Tech Pacific) is the integration manager.

"All business heads will report to me and I will be the final authority
in India. I will, in turn, report to Shailendra Gupta, the COO of Ingram Micro
Asia Pacific (minus China and Hong Kong), who will report to Alain Monie. Monie
is the head of Asia Pacific region for Ingram Micro," detailed Jaishankar.

He stated that care has been taken to ensure that the inte-gration leads to a
strong team at Ingram Micro India. "Now, we have a much larger team with
clearly defined roles, up to the branch level, focusing on specific product
lines and business functions. India is a high opportunity, high growth market
and we can capitalize on it with our wide product offerings and team
strength," he said. According to Jai-shankar, during the course of merger
the management had cut-down staff only wherever it was redundant. By and large,
most were retained by the company with meaningful jobs assigned to them."

Talking about the business strategies and expansion programs, Jaishankar
said, the company would look at gro-wth-both organic and inor-ganic-by the
way of growing business with the existing partners (vendors) and also bringing
in new brands and products.

Consumer electronics is one major focus area for the company, which started
off with the mobile business. Samsung is a big account the company wants to
explore to the fullest before expanding further. It also expects big growth
coming from MP3 players and digicams. "We are looking at creating a new
channel for this and once it is in place, we will add more brands and products.
Simi-larly, we see a significant opportunity and growth in value business, where
we have created a space for ourselves by deploying a team of highly skilled
people. We will com-plement vendors' direct sales efforts through channel
part-ners, with much of action happening in the SMB segment and mid
markets," he said.

Ingram Micro believes that credit is a key enabler for business and it has
clarified that there is no revision of credit offered to its channel partners.
The company would give the same amount of credit it was earlier offering under
two different acco-unts-Ingram Micro and Tech Pacific. "As long as the
channel partners meet volumes (they were doing with Tech Pacific and Ingram
Micro), there is no limitation on credit offered to them," Jaishankar
pointed out.

The company will continue its focus on Vesta, the in-house brand, with
systems and components as two divisions.

Talking about the distri-bution market in India, Jaishankar said, "With
this merger, the top three players have been reduced to two. And, there will be
a huge gap between one and two; as well as two and three. In fact, it will take
more than a year or two, to see another distributor breaking into the top three
in the country. However, India is a high potential market, it can att-ract some
distribution hou-ses from outside the country, but that will take time."

Divisional Heads

• M Mohapatra: Peripherals & Supplies Division
• Bimal Das: Systems Business
• Hariharan Easwer: Component 1 (Intel, Seagate and other HDDs) + Vesta
• Ketan Doshi: Component 2 (Samsung, Microsoft and AMD)
• K Venkat: Value 1 (Enterprise servers, software and security products) +
  Tech support for the vendors
• Sanjiv Mehrotra: Value 2 (Networking portfolio, storage and Sun business)
• Ravi Katial: Consumer Business (mobile handsets)
• Sanjay Achwal: Exclusive Division (HCL, APC, Xerox)

Regional Heads

• Sanjay Zadoo: North I (only Delhi) based in Delhi

• Mukesh Choudhary: North II (except Delhi) based in Delhi

• Abhinav Paracer: South I (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Sri
  Lanka) based in Chennai

• Mohanesh Khandpur: South II (Karnataka, Kerala) based in
  Bangalore

• Cyrus Patel: West I (Mumbai, Pune, Goa) based in Mumbai

• Devender Rawat: West II (Chattisgarh, Gujarat, MP,rest of
  Maharashtra) based in Ahmedabad

• K Rajan: East, based in Kolkata

Vertical Sales Heads

• Sanjay Mittal: Value (based in Delhi)

• RM Kaushal: Govt (based in Delhi)

• FA Farouqui: OEM and Strategic Accounts (based in Mumbai)

• NS Bindra: Dollar and Up-country Business (based in
  Delhi)

• Chandan Bhattacharya: Exclusives (based in Mumbai)
  Operations

• S Ravindran: Warehouse, logistics and support

• Dipak Ashar: Finance

• Atul Gaur: Credit

• Alex Augustine: Human Resources

• Aloysius Fernandes: Integration Manager

S Gopikrishna

Chennai