Continuing its trek across the country, The DQ Week Tech Caravan reached the holy city of Varanasi/Banaras. The event saw participation from 60 partners from the channel community. The evening started off with a presentation by Norton, Uniline and Western Digital. Some serious open house discussion started post-presentation.
The IT market of Varanasi is currently undergoing a transformation phase. The wafer thin margins and price under-cutting issues and many other trade issues are forcing veteran IT partners of the city to diversify into other non-IT field. Since IT business does not have any entry barrier it is also becoming a market for fly by night operators. The other big lacuna of the city is lack of an active IT association, which has been defunct for last 3 years. Having said that, Varanasi IT market is mushrooming as compared to its neighboring cities like Kanpur and Lucknow. The city has two biggest buyers' of IT education institutes and locomotives.
Discussing the problem that the partners face while dealing with DoA, Rohit Goel of Tech Solution said, "Distributors sell us the material when they have targets to achieve, but they are not willing to help us when we have a DoA issue. Today, the warranty issue has become a bottleneck for us and none of the IT vendors support aptly on the service front."
Udit Vasudeva of Bright Technologies also raised the issue about the slow death of component market and recent hard drive price surge still not control in upcountry market. He said, "The hard drives pricing gap in India as compared to Singapore is very huge. As a result assembler players are getting into branded space and creating competition for the existing players.
Commenting on the revival of the IT association Deepak Kumar of HK Computers said, "We are gearing up for the fresh election and planning to revive our Eastern UP Information Technology Dealers Association (EUPITDA) in coming time. Our association have sufficient funds and we want new players to come forward and restart the association."
At The DQ Week Tech Caravan, Sanajay Gupta, country manager, Uniline Energy Systems, introduced its newly appointed national distributor Iris Computers before the Varanasi IT dealers. The company also showcased its existing range of UPS and discussed how partners can make more margins on its products. The company presentation was quite captivating and partners raised questions related to the products and its dealership. Pranay Khare, branch manager of Iris Computers and Sanajy Gupta, regional manager, marketing, Uniline were also present at the event.
Presentation by Anand Srivastava, ASM (UP and Uttarakhand), Western Digital also talked about the enhancement made into its revised partner program and existing warranty support available on its product for dealers and customers.
Arun Kumar Singh, territory manager (UP), Norton by Symantec also updated partners with its existing internet software and new features being added to the product.