Thiruvananthapuram: Hoping for the Best

Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of God's own country Kerala, truly serves as an 'abode of Lord Anantha.' The city's rich and famous culture can be depicted from its renowned Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, which has been a divine place for worship from various centuries. The city's intricately decorated temples, sand beaches, and lush greenery has made it a must on the itinerary of any visitor traveling to South India.

Apart from being acknowledged as a cultural heritage, Thiruvananthapuram is also considered to be a growing city in terms of economy and industrial developments. It has various major IT establishments such as Oracle, Infosys, TCS, HCL, etc. The IT market of the city has around 200 channel partners, who deal in a range of IT products. The channel partners in the city mainly derive business from banks as well as SOHO and corporate sectors. The sale of Toshiba, Sony and HP laptops always maintain a high ratio ie, 70:30, when compared to desktops. Of late, due to the changing buying trends, most of the people opt to buy tablets from Apple and Samsung.

In the last 6 months, the market hasn't seen any significant growth except 'Onam,' which being an important festival of Kerala, brought good business to partners. "The Thiruvananthapuram IT market is not growing much, and the reason for this could be the recent news of recession. In fact, banks have also increased their interest rates, due to which customers are showing less interest in buying any product," said Prem Nair of Scot Technologies. While some channel partners are of the opinion that the sale would be dull during most months this year, others say that it will improve in the coming months.

Thiruvananthapuram also boasts of an active IT association, All Kerala IT Dealers' Association, AKITDA, which has a strong presence in the market. Serving as a big support for channel partners, the association takes up the issues as and when they evolve. Talking about the issues, recently solved by the association, Biju Abraham of Ideal Systems said, "Recently, channel partners had an issue with Intel for the replacement of motherboards, which was later resolved by the association." Talking on the similar lines, Nair said, "There was an issue with HP, wherein it was giving exclusive retailership to non-IT dealers or mobile operators. But our association acted wisely on this issue and asked all dealers to ban HP Compaq products in the market. But later on, this issue got resolved, and now we are dealing with HP without any major concern."

The IT market in Thiruvananthapuram is also plagued by issues like lack of service support, DoA and product replacement. Channel partners want vendors to resolve these issue as soon as possible and come out with more refined process.

Interview: Prem Nair, CEO, Scot Technologies

How has been the market growth in the last 6 months?

It is not growing much. The recent news of recession has decreased the buying trends among customers.

How active is AKITDA?

It is a very active association that has been resolving our issues with vendors from time-to-time.

To which business segment you cater to?

Mainly banking and publishing sectors.

What are your market predictions for this year?

I think it will be dull for most of the months this year.