Lamington Road losing its sheen...

Lamington Road, the IT hub of Mumbai, seems to be losing its sheen over the years, thanks to the market dynamics and new pockets emerging around the city, which operate on their own and cater to their own set of customers.

The markets like Dadar, Andheri, Malad, Ghatkopar, Mulund, and Thane, located in the vicinity of the place, have started defining their boundaries. As a result, they are turning out to be major IT hubs and big competitors to the Lamington Road.

Speaking candidly to The DQ Week about the change, Kapal Pansari, director, marketing, Rashi Peripherals said, "We have been observing these trends and I believe it will be the next step to business evolution. Unlike the olden days, Lamington Road market is not the only market available. We have significant business coming from other regions within Mumbai and even Thane separately."

Unlike older times, when a partner used to visit Lamington Road for any form of sourcing, the regional distributors (RDs) and channel partners now cater to their customers directly from their offices, which are located in the above mentioned regions .

For example, Andheri had a lot of service centers but now partners here have sales offices too. The place, which caters to entire belt of Andheri to Malad, as a result is now gradually emerging as an important business hub.

Similarly, Ghatkopar, which caters to pockets like Chembur, Vidhyavihar and many more, is also emerging as a business hub. Also, Thane has also turned into an important region for most of the distributors now and many have a direct presence from there. To its benefit it has a location advantage and with emerging industries in the regions like Nashik, Kasara, etc, it is only going to provide the right impetus for growth, for partners in this region.

This type of development can be observed in other metros like New Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai. It seems further defining of regions and niche focus will isolate pockets due to which channel partners of that region will have to compete in a specific area only.

So, how the trend will further affect the market dynamics, only time will tell.