Meerut: A Booming IT Hub

Meerut, situated in the state of Uttar

Pradesh, is one of the fastest growing cities in India. For the last

few years, it has been transformed into a fl ourishing city with

various ongoing developments in the infrastructure, education,

commercial and IT sectors. Apart from being known for handloom work

and scissors industry, the city houses a number of micro, small and

medium scale units. Owing to its thriving evolution, it has been

considered as one of the prospective IT and ITeS hubs of India by

several industrialists. Besides its roaring IT industry, Meerut has a

good hold on its education system and has numerous institutions and

colleges. That is why, the city's IT market garners a 40%

marketshare from the education vertical alone, while the corporate,

government and retail segments contribute to the rest.

Meerut's IT market has around 100

registered dealers and more than 230 unregistered dealers, who are

doing a fairly profi table business in

the city and are optimistic for future growth. Like many other

cities, here too, the demand for laptops always remains on a high

swing. However, Intel processors, Seagate drives, Asus and

Simmtronics motherboards also hold a good repute among buyers. Dell

and HP are the foremost vendors who rule the laptop market in the

city. According to Rajesh Pandey of PR Infotech, “Here, dealers

usually sell 30,000 laptops per month, apart from other products, and

the sale fproducts generally goes up during the festive season, like

Diwali and Dhanteras.” Vendors also keep ntroducing new

schemes for customers from time-to-time. As far as the annual revenue

of the Meerut IT market is concerned, it fetches approximately Rs

500 crore. Meerut doesn't have any particular computer or IT

association. The IT dealers have divided the city into various zones

and each of them has different associations. For instance, it has

various operating markets like Mangal Pandey Nagar, PL Sharma road

and Kaveri Complex. These markets have their own associations, which

are not up to the mark and do nothing for the welfare of the dealers.

They are just for the sake of name. When it comes to

dealers' issues, they are grappling with huge difference of rates

among themselves. And it has increased over a period of time due to

multiple franchisee model, which is being adopted by several vendors

these days. “We do not get enough profi t margins and have to sell

the products on the same rate at which company sells us,” said

Anurag Jindal of Swift Services. Vendors usually hire multiple

dealers for the same products or brands, which increases competition

and reduces profi t margins. This is the biggest problem faced by

dealers in the city. Dealers want that vendors should provide them a

fi xed pricing model and should not differentiate among their

dealers.