Madhura Khasnobis

Channel partners and industry leaders from all over North India gathered in

Delhi to witness the 11th Annual The DQ Week awards on July 6. The 400 strong

crowd took part in the felicitation of the people who have made an indelible

impression on the IT channel community of the region in the last year.

Sify was the title sponsor for the awards, while D-Link and Digilink, K7

Computing, Supertron Electronics and Delta were the associate sponsors. Also

associated with the awards were Sybase as the Business Intelligence Partner,

Royal Challenge as the Beverage Partner and EMC as the Information

Infrastructure Award Partner.

The awards night was supported by channel associations of Delhi, Progressive

Channels Association Of IT (PCAIT) and Computer Media Dealers Association (CMDA).

In his opening speech, Ibrahim Ahmad, Group Editor, The DQ Week thanked the

channel community for their attendance. He spoke about the positive aspects of

the national budget, which was announced on July 6. Ahmad also touched upon the

'Unique ID Card Project' undertaken by the government and headed by Nandan

Nikelani. He elaborated that the channel partners have a big role to play in

bringing the project to prominence and propelling it to success.

The evening kicked off with a visual presentation by Sify, the title sponsor

of the event. Anil Pant, VP-Channel Sales, Sify and Shiv Nath Ghosh,

VP-Enterprise Application Services, Sify spoke about the importance of making

profit during this downturn and how a partnership with Sify can allow the

channel community to achieve just that. The company also invited on stage one of

its prominent partners to tell the gathering about the benefits of doing

business with Sify and also the edge that the companies services offering

provide to the channel partners.

Talking about the difference that Sify has made to his business Rajan Arora

of Megahertz Infotech said that one of the things he liked about working with

Sify was the high level of assistance that the company provides to its channel

partners. On a personal note, Arora informed the audience that since he had

partnered with Sify, because of their offerings he was now able to add an

additional revenue of Rs 40-50 lakh per month.

Soon afterwards, the award ceremony went underway and the crowd cheered as

presentations were made by various distinguished members of the IT community.

The evening also saw some special awards being given away in conjunction with

channel associations. The DQ Week-CMDA Upcoming Entrepreneur of the year award

was bagged Sumangalam International. Puneet Singhal, President, CMDA gave away

the award to Sudhir Midha.

The most touching moment of the ceremony was when PCAIT awarded the annual

The DQ Week-PCAIT Ashish Aggarwal Memorial Trophy. In a speech delivered

straight from the heart, Saket Kapur, General Secretary, PCAIT recalled with

fondness Ashish. Reminiscing about Ashish, Kapur said, “Ashish was a go-getter.

The amount that he achieved in a short time was amazing. He took over a well

established business from his dad and then went on to take it to bigger heights.

He was snatched away from us very early but we all recall the qualities that

made him special. And those are the very same qualities that we see in our

winner Gurpreet.”

The entire executive council of PCAIT came on the stage to honor Gurpreet

Singh Bhatia of Arrow Technologies.