Iris to expand to C class cities

Delhi based Iris Computers Ltd has chalked out a strategy to grow through volumes during this year, which would see the company appoint 100 additional retailers in C class cities. The company currently has a base of 900 resellers across the country. 

The company, which closed 2002-03 with a revenue of Rs 206 crore, expects to mop up Rs 250 crore during the next fiscal.

Despite increased topline growth, profit margins were negligible at less than one percent.

Iris currently distributes HP and Compaq PCs, IBM, Acer, Philips and its own brand of PCs called Iris PC. According to Sanjiv Krishen, Chairman, Iris Computers, among its portfolio of PCs Acer is growing very rapidly mainly because of winning tenders due to its lower price points. 

Besides volume-led growth, the company sees its growth coming from value-added initiatives like Iris Unified learning and Iris Care. Under Iris Unified learning, the company provides training in basic as well as advanced computer application courses to corporate. It has trained about 500 people in the last two years. 

The company has now become a Microsoft approved trainer and has executed training programs with some state governments like Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Assam.

Iris Care focuses on providing hardware maintenance for its clients, supplying spare parts to its dealer community and care packs. Another initiative that Iris Care has undertaken is to become an authorized service provider of IBM so that it can now supply spare parts to all its dealer community. Earlier the resellers had an issue with the supply of spare parts as ASPs would be directly in competition with them but the company claims that Iris Care now caters to all dealers without any bias.

Speaking about the company's new services, Krishen said that the two new initiatives contributed about Rs 5 crore to Rs 8 crore to the current year's revenues. According to him, these initiatives, which were launched two years ago, have made break-even this year and would be profitable next year.

Balaka Baruah Aggarwal

(CNS)