Lalwani to head CMDA

With an objective to form a new committee and address issues pertaining to IT

trade in the region, Pune-based Computers & Media Dealers Association (CMDA)

conducted its 18th AGM at Fortune Hotel in Lavasa on July 4. The AGM saw

participation from over 170 members.

In keeping with its tradition of handing over the post of President to the

working VP of the committee, Naresh Lalwani of Cyber Net IT was appointed as the

new President of CMDA. Shishkant Satbhai was elected as VP while Hemant Naik

will be the Secretary. Other office bearers include Yogesh Godbole as Joint

Secretary, Manoj Shah as Treasurer and Sanjay Adhav as Joint Treasurer. Debu

Banerjee, Ashutosh Karkhanis, Sanjeev Pathare, Jayant Shete, Ratnesh Rathi,

Bharat Gopuskar and Deepak Agarwal will be the other active members of the new

committee.

Talking about the AGM, Lalwani mentioned, “We have discussed several issues

pertaining to IT business during the AGM. While we looked at ways to resolve the

service issue irking system integrators. Procedures related to cheque payments

for smooth flow of business were also discussed with the distributors.”

CMDA has initiated the concept of SI forum in 2008 and the 18th AGM saw the

association continuing with its endeavor to address service and replacement

issues piling up with the system integrators.

Added Lalwani, “The SI forum helped us in resolving service issue with HP, LG

and Viewsonic. All the vendors were proactive in addressing the issues and steps

have been taken by them. In addition meeting with distributors helped us

streamline the business process,” he added.

Taking lesson from a recent incident where an employee of a Chennai-based

distributor had fled with blank cheques issued by the dealers as part payment,

CMDA has initiated a process that will extend safety for the dealer community.

“During our meeting with the distributors we have charted common guidelines to

be followed with regard to cheque payments to distributors, in order to ensure

smooth operations between both the parties,” added Lalwani.

In addition to this CMDA is also planning to come out with an IT directory

that will provide relevant information about corporates.