Ranchi partners seek disti support

The Eastern upcountry markets have been registering one of the lowest growth
rates owing to the economic scenario. The issue came up during the recent IT
Panchayat held here on March 16 in association with The DQ Week. As channel
partners across Ranchi turned up at the event armed with queries regarding
warranty policies and supply shortages, the national distributors focused on
payment and credit problems. Things heated up as complaints related to shortage
in supply of Samsung LCD monitors was discussed.

Ingram Micro addressed the issues of transit damages, and interest levied on
late payment surfaced, which was raised by Technocrat, Ranchi division. Both
Ingram Micro and Redington admitted that the market in Ranchi and its
surrounding area is suffering heavily due to the slowdown.

The discussion further heated up with the dealers accusing national
distributors in Ranchi of overlooking their problems with the vendors. Dealers
complained that whenever any issue related to the product arises, the
distributors take little interest in it and bluntly hand over the case to
service centers and transit damage charges are rejected by the vendors on every
stance.

As a resolution to the crisis, Vivek Singhania of Computers India Corporation
opined that the tier-2 and 3 players are suffering the most because the national
distributors were paying lukewarm attention to this problem. He suggested that
since the national distributors have direct access to the vendor's top
officials, the distributors should participate in influencing the vendor's
policies.

The sponsors of the event were Symantec, Emerson, Gigabyte and Go IP. Over 85
channel partners attended the event. Representatives of Ingram Micro, Redington,
Neoteric and Supertron were panelists at the event.

Avishek Rakshit

avishekr@cybermedia.co.in