Robbers strike at a city retail shop

DQW News Bureau Chennai, Oct 23

It has caught everyone's fascination, including robbers.
Laptops and TFTs were stolen from a city retail shop last week, which has sent
shock waves among resellers. The culprits made off with 13 laptops and two LCD
monitors, costing nearly Rs 6.5 lakh. The incident took place on October 18,
2006 night, a few hours after the shop was closed. "We found out only the
next morning when we opened the shop for business. We immediately rushed to the
police station and filed a complaint. Now the police are investigating the
matter," said G Karthikeyan, Partner, Alfa Computers.

Alfa Computers was started in 1996 as a consumables dealer and
slowly, graduated into a retailer-with the opening of their multi-branded
showroom early this year. "We were growing consistently in the market and
have became a popular retailer in our region. It is very unfortunate to meet a
situation like this now, when we are working on our expansion plans," said
S Sathyamoorthy, Partner, Alfa Computers. Last year, the company registered a
turnover of Rs 1.92 crore in business.

Alfa
Computers has meanwhile approached Sneham-a regional association for system
assemblers, to inform and alert all the resellers about this theft. The company
has also prepared a list of products stolen from their shop (with product serial
numbers), which is being circulated in the market to inform resellers and seek
their help in tracking the materials. "We believe the products will come
back to the market for sale and we are seeking resellers support to catch the
culprit. We have taken the association's support to shoot e-mails to all the
resellers, while circulating a list on our own in Ritchie Street market,"
quipped Karthikeyan.

"We, at Sneham, are taking concerted efforts to help our
reseller friend. We have informed all the city resellers and are seeking their
help to track the materials. We will do our best in this matter," said H
Ratnakumar, President, Sneham.

The products stolen from Alfa Computers include entry-level,
mid-range and high-end laptops of brands such as Acer, HP, Compaq and Lenovo.
"We also lost two LCD monitors of HP and Lenovo brand," added
Sathyamoorthy. One consoling factor in the whole episode is that Alfa Computers
has insured their stock, which comes as a relief to the resellers.