Repair market still an unknown territory

Imagine one fine day your hard disk conks off. If your system still comes
under the warranty then its fine but what if the warranty has expired and you
have no choice but to shell out a hefty sum for replacing the hard disk. That
gonna cost one a hell lot of money!!!

But how many of us really go to the point to see what actually went wrong
with the hard disk. For most of us the word of the service provider is the
ultimate. Most of us are ignorant of the fact that innumerable times it’s just
a small part of the device that needs to be changed and not the whole part.

This is where people like Ashok Kaul, Director, Vast Notebook Serve (I), who
specializes in proving spares for laptops, step in, "Most of the time the
problems with the part is very small which needs a particular component in that
part to be changed. But most of the time we see that the whole part is replaced,
which costs customers a fortune."

Services have always been an integral part after a product is sold. And with
the pene-tration of PCs and laptops increasing in the country, there would
definitely be an increase in the amount of services that would be requi-red in
the future.

According to industry calculations, three percent of all computers in India
are laptops. The PC market in India is about 2.6 million and there are about
80,000 lap-tops. And by 2007, 20 percent of the total computers sold in India
are expected to be laptops.

According to Kaul, "There are inherent problems in laptops where each
part is proprietary. Once the company goes out of stock of that particular part
then it becomes difficult to get a replacement."

The spares market is still at a nascent stage and the awareness is also
absent. "People are not aware that it’s not necessary to change the whole
part and make a hole in their pocket. We are trying to make them aware of what
goes on when a particular component starts troubling," Kaul added.

According to market sour-ces the spares market is steadily growing and the
margin that a service provider makes is also not that bad. "The services
providers in Nehru Place makes very high margins and we make some-where between
20-25 per-cent," Kaul stated.

Karma Negi

New Delhi