UP channels gear up to form statewide association

With an objective to have a common interactive platform for the channels within the state of Uttar Pradesh, various associations in the state are gearing up to have a meeting at Allahabad in order to form a statewide UP Dealers Association.

"This is a positive move by various resellers in the UP region and we are meeting on 22nd of this month in Allahabad to decide the modus operandi of the association. Primarily, the soon to be formed association will have representation from all the IT active districts in the state including Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Allahabad, Varanasi, Dehradun and Bareilly," revealed Manish Mehrotra, President, Allahabad Dealers Association.

During the meeting, Presidents of the different regional associations are meeting to formulate policies and rules for the statewide association. In all there are about 85 districts within UP, but only 25 percent of these districts have formal dealer associations. Once this statewide association is formed, all the different associations will have a common voice with regards to

various issues of concern towards distributors and other related issues.

"Some two months back, we received computer systems from one of India's leading brands and there were some critical parts such as CPU and hard disks missing from the consignment. We are still to get those parts and we are following the

case

Issues such as this have become a big burden on our heads and we need to resolve them. This statewide association once operational will help us in solving these issues easily," explained

Mehrotra.

Added PK Gupta, Secretary, Kanpur Computer Dealers Association, "A lot of times we have issues regarding replacements from the national distributors and if we don't have a big umbrella of an association, then these distributors do not take us that seriously. Once we have a big statewide association these issues will be solved quite easily. We are going to have a representation of two big resellers from each city of relevance in the statewide association."

Interestingly, all the major national distributors are watching this move quite keenly. "The big distributors fear that from now on they will have to be very careful about their dealings and issues with the resellers. This association will give us a common voice and ground to convey our message in a proper way," hoped a leading Allahabad-based reseller.

Zia Askari