Kores India launches storage solution

- Ties-up with Plasmon - Set to implement channel policy

Mumbai-based Kores (India) Limited, a leader in office equipment and banking
automation solutions, is now getting into IT space. The company has today
launched data archival and retrieval systems, in association with UK-based
Plasmon Plc.

Kores will be the exclusive distribution partner for Plasmon in India,
marketing their range of optical storage solutions. "There is a huge
potential for storage solutions in the country and India is still relatively a
smaller but emerging market. With the storage application requirements
increasing across the industry segments and many regulations passed by the
governing bodies (such as RBI and IRDA) to save / protect data for several years
for statutory purposes in institutions, the market is opening up in a big way.
Players like us see a big opportunity with cost-effective solutions and Plasmon
offers wide range of products which are value-for-money," said GSS Dutt,
CEO, Business & Computer Systems Division, Kores India.

Initially, Kores will be launching only two range of products from Plasmon in
India. These include the G-Series and UDO Library, which offers high storage
capacity starting from 720GB and above. The G-Series is also powered by UDO.

D-Series or DVD Library is another archival storage solution, which
consolidates both CDs and DVDs. "All these solutions are priced
competitively in the market and initially, we will be involved only in direct
marketing, mainly focusing on the banking segment. In the next stage, we want to
implement a channel policy and channels will play a key role in taking our
products to various industry segments, across the country. We also know that
business cannot happen without channels," he said. Kores is expected to
have a channel network in place by early next year, for storage products.

"IT channels are not new to us and we are dealing with them for quite
sometime. Kores is the one of the HP supplies partners in India."

Talking about UDO and its performance, Sanjay Patil, Head (Document
Procession & Storage), Business & Computer Systems Division, Kores
India, said, "UDO is a cost-effective solution, which is the best alternate
for costly network storage. It offers the convenience of tape drive and
performance of magnetic disk. UDO is a very flexible media format, with higher
capacity and better performance offering over 40 percent cost advantage in
storage solutions."

Plasmon is a transnational company, with a worldwide sales revenue of USD 83
million, marketing UDO (Ultra Density Optical) drives, media and libraries in
storage, through channel partners and OEM route. While Kores India is an office
equipment and banking automation solution provider with a turnover of Rs 440
crore (fiscal ending March 2005). The Business & Computer Systems Division
(B&CSD) is a key business unit within Kores India, which is spearheading the
tech business activities of the company and contributing around 10 percent of
revenue in the total turnover.

S Gopikrishna

Chennai