iValue bets big on channel

Sunil Pillai, former Business Head of Select Technologies (Subsidiary of WeP
Peripherals) has floated his own distribution company called iValue
InfoSolutions. Based out of Bangalore the company has its operations in Delhi,
Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.

An independent subsidiary of Singapore-based information security solutions
provider EGuardian Pvt Ltd, iValue infoSolutions is also backed by a couple of
other undisclosed Indian investments. Pillai, CEO of iValue infoSolutions said,
“We would be distributing solutions in the networking, storage and security
space to our partners and customers through our proprietary value maximizing
services (VMS), which is one of our business models. And the go-to-market
strategy would be partner driven.” Till date iValue has tied up with around 11
vendors and expecting for some more tie-ups. However Pillai refused to disclose
the vendors due to different reasons.

Within a month of the company's inception, iValue has tied up with 380
channel partners. “We have been in the distribution network for long time and
through the benchmark we have set in our services over the years, we were able
to tie-up with most of our partners we worked for earlier,” Pillai claimed. It
may be noted that the current 40-member team working in iValue, joined Pillai
after resigning from WeP along with him. “Our team has around 200 plus man years
of experience in the market, which will enable us to continue our excellence in
services that we were providing to our partners and customers in the previous
opportunity. We would hand hold our partners in every aspect like training, POC
and challenges,” Pillai informed.

Sunil Pillai

Speaking about the distribution business, Pillai shared that it would be a
hard task as he and his team had been dealing with channel partners for a long
time. “Distribution is not a new portfolio for us. Even in our previous
assignment we have been engaged with distribution and have closely worked with
partners. We are confident in extending our services with our new set of
partners,” Pillai averred. iValue has also proposed to increase the partner base
by next financial year. “We are planning to add 100 more partners especially
system integrators and solution providers, who are focused on different
verticals,” he informed. Besides that iValue has also proposed to increase the
employee headcount by another 20-25 before the end of FY 08.

By the end of the first year of operations, Pillai expects iValue to generate
revenue of $10 million. “We are confident of achieving the target and are
focused on that. We are making every attempts to increase the mind share of our
company among partners, even though most of them are already aware of us. We
have been successful in our past endeavors and look forward to continuing that
here,” Pillai claimed.