style="font-size: 11pt;" size="2">It's
that time of the year again, when partners get ready for their new
quarter of business. Leading partners in the region claim that for
the past two month sales have gone down by up to 50 percent. While
the fourth quarter has traditionally been one which partners have
looked forward to, this year the grim situation brought no cheer from
this front. Partners
in the West marked a stark difference in sales as compared to last
two months. Saifee Merchant from Best International shared, “This
time the market has been very slow and there is no excitement neither
does it looks like the season of March. I don't think so the budget
has anything to do with it but sadly we are not able to figure out
the reason behind the same. Even the corporates inquiries are slow or
I suppose they are lowing down their inventories.” Lamenting the
poor sales during the period Sandeep Parasrampuria from BEST IT WORLD
said that the the market is running very slow and sales
are not happening in the market.
style="font-weight: normal;">Therefore,
the market is not happening enough to excite customers and retailers.
“
size="2">Lot
of commotion is being experienced in the market and also prices have
gone up in China and Japan and share markets have also shown a
volatile reaction. But we make sure that whenever we face such
reaction we are least affected and beef up our marketing efforts,”
shared Parasrampuria. Looking
at the partners reaction, it seems that the market has been sluggish
for the last one and a half month. “Since the volume of the
business is still fine, we are witnessing a 20-25 percent low in the
overall sales. Corporates have their own cycle of buying the
products and IT being very important and sensitive we expect a major
sale from this sector. Vendors have been trying to push in for the
March numbers but the flush out of product is not happening. Lots of
channel partners are piled up with the products because this is the
end of JFM quarter,” added Chetan Timbadia form D C Infotech.
According
to Bimal Zaveri of Hardtrac Computer, cautious spending by customers
and a decrease in the investments in the corporate sector has
impacted the growth of the company. “
face="Times New Roman, serif">Basically,
people
wait for changes in the budget to happen, decrease in the
prices so that they can buy products. There is a slight decrease from
previous months sales, but also the strategies differs from company
to company if one has to overcome this phase,” Zaveri added. While
the general feeling in the IT market has been low, partners are
optimistic that the scenario would get better in the next two or
three months time.