Raiser Plaza, Jaipur forms its own association

The lack of coordination among Rajasthan Computers' Dealers Association (RCTA)
and Raj IT Forum has been making news in Jaipur for a long time now. The latest
from the pink city is that it now has a new association. Raiser Plaza Computer
Traders Association (RPTCTA) is the latest entrant to the club of associations.

The association has been formed by the dealers at Raiser Plaza, the IT hub of
Jaipur and the executive members are Shyam Jain from Jai Sri Durga Computer,
Vivek Kalra from Kalra Sales Corporation, Ajit Surana from Ganpati Computer,
Dinesh Chajed from Sun Computer, Pradeep Bhimrajka from Ridhi Sidhi Computer,
Anil Chopra from Sunrise Computer, Jaideep Mathur from Jaideep Mathur Dot Com
and Sandeep Daga from Khushal IT Solution.

“Currently, there are no committees or specific posts in the association and
there are only executive members. The association will conduct an election
within few months to decide different designations of the members. As of now we
have 81 members listed in the association and we will have around 150 members
soon,” informed Shyam Jain who is the force behind the formation of the new
association. It is interesting to note that Jain had in fact contested the RCTA
election this time for the post of the secretary.

Giving the reason for forming a new association, when the market has already
got one association and an IT Forum, he said, “It is correct that Jaipur has
already got two working associations. However, RCTA has been ignoring the Raiser
members who contribute 40 percent of IT marketshare of Jaipur. For the benefit
of partners operating out of Raiser plaza and to do IT promotions, members of
the plaza wanted their own association and hence we formed RPTCTA.”

The association will conduct a meeting in which they will finalize and decide
the activities to be done and the targets to be accomplished. It will make
efforts to establish good relations between the distributors, vendors and the
channel partners.

One of the active member of Raj IT Forum shared that though it is not
encouraging to have a new association, in the long- term it may have a positive
impact on the activities of the RCTA as it may push them to become more active.
Dealers in Jaipur opined that every channel partner has the right to express
their views and in case they are not satisfied with the actions of current
association, they can go ahead and form a new association.

Considering the inactive attitude of the members of RCTA, the formation of a
new association might actually jolt them into more visible actions for their
long term survival. One of the ex-members of the executive council of RCTA
stated that this is just a way to gain attention in the market and no one is
working to provide solutions to the issues that the channel faces.

“An association cannot run unless and until the members are active enough to
take up the real challenges of the community. These actions are only for
personal gains,” said one of the RCTA members on the condition of anonymity.

Reacting to the formation of a new association, Deepak Sharda, Secretary,
RCTA said, “This new association is not in competition with RCTA and we do not
have any problem with this. They are members of RCTA. It is not correct that
RCTA has ignored the dealers in Raiser Plaza. Our association is for major
issues and this Raiser association is for individual issues.”

What is interesting to note is that while the city now has three association,
the Jaipur dealers are plagued with VAT issues and none of the associations has
been active enough to highlight it anywhere.