MAIT to include federation of IT channel associations

Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT), India's apex IT hardware body, representing IT companies, is all set to announce its agenda for 2012. The association has recently undergone a leadership change and now it will be conducting its fi rst executive council meet on December 1-3, 2011, in Goa, todiscuss the annual strategy.

In a first and exclusive interview with The DQWeek, Dr Alok Bharadwaj, president, MAIT, who took over the charge last month, explained about the key areas which MAIT will be contemplating on and taking final decision during the 3-day meet. He said, "We are exploring to include three new chapters or stakeholders into our existing membership base so that we could double up our current size of membership from 82 and become custodian of these stakeholders. Having said that, if we see the current membership pattern of MAIT, it is dominated by vendors of brand owners. However, we are recognizing this fact and are keen on expanding the membership base, so that all the three stakeholders in some way get represented. We need major presence of these identified stakeholders, so that their voice need be factored whenever we conceive and conceptualize any direction for MAIT." Besides vendors as stakeholders, MAIT intends to include large IT system integrators such as TCS, Wipro, Educom, NIIT, Spnaco, etc, as MAIT members.

Secondly, MAIT is exploring opportunities to include a federation of channel association and lastly SMEs, who are involved into small scale of IT manufacturing. Dr Bhardwaj added, "Towards this direction, we are planning to create different MAIT's chapters, so it is important, when we create these chapters all the three stakeholders start associating in a better way and find a house within the house. Our main objective is to give voice to all the issues and problems which are creating hurdles on these stakeholders' way, as they are the most important players in the demand and supply chain of IT industry.

The Indian SI market is worth Rs 10,000 crore, hence, we are seriously looking at expanding this membership to include SIs in our executive council." When asked how MAIT will become a federation of IT channel association, he said, "MAIT should become a federation of IT channel associations, and there are 100 such channel associations. If they become members of MAIT, then we will become an umbrella for such associations for raising a common voice. We know each association has its own local state level or issues wherein MAIT will begin to look at micro level which will be common for the channel fraternity."