Tech Pacific held onto its leading position in the Silver Club with agency revenue of Rs 2,193 crore in 2003-04. After a marginal growth of 3% in 2002-03 and a negative growth of 3% the previous fiscal, the 20% growth in 2003-04 came as a welcome relief.

Tech Pac's revenues got a shot in the arm from its PC business, which the company forayed into in 2003-04. This business garnered Rs 734 crore last fiscal, with HP bringing in Rs 305 crore and IBM Rs 205 crore. HCL, its third PC brand, brought in the rest.

Says K Jaishankar, CEO, Tech Pacific India, "Our PC business was a high growth area and a big chunk of our customers started selling these products. Some of them belonged to our existing channel base, but quite a few of them were new additions."

The distributor had signed up with Zenith for the distribution of white boxes at the start of the fiscal, but exited from that business within three months. "We felt that by selling white boxes, we would be competing with some of our customers, who were also into assembling, and therefore decided to disengage from it," says Jaishankar. It was at this time opportunity came knocking in the form of HCL EzeeBee PCs, which the company lapped up.

Tech Pac also signed on Moser Baer for distribution of is optical media, which contributed 30% of the company's total supplies business. However, this was not the first time it got into the optical media business. It was earlier a partner for HP's optical media, till the vendor discontinued business.

The distribution major also saw a lot of action on the processor business front, when it discontinued Intel in early 2003 and signed on AMD, which contributed 13% of its overall sales. But recently, Tech Pac decided to patch things up with Intel and will be its distributor again.

Adding a new dimension to its image, Tech Pac started the 'Exclusive Business' division and hired 100 people for this new venture. Here, it went beyond its role as a fulfillment partner and worked on demand generation strategies for vendors with whom it had exclusive distribution agreement.

"Wherever we felt there was a strong regional opportunity for any brand, we engaged with local partners for channel recruitment, development and business growth," notes Jaishankar. Having tasted success in this venture with HCL, Tech Pac is more than keen to align itself with other vendors for similar arrangements.

Surprisingly, though Tech Pac is the national distributor for two mobile handset brands - Siemens and Panasonic - revenues from this business were pitifully small, as compared to those garnered by it competitors, HCL and Redington. But Tech Pac is not worried.

According to Jaishankar, it is a broad-based, multi-vendor distribution house, unlike other distys who do mobile phone business in limited geographies. Tech Pac is willing to take time to develop this business gradually and increase its contribution from 7% to the overall revenues in 2003-04 to 9% this fiscal.

Convergence products were another vertical that Tech Pac got into with MP3 and digicams. While this business is still in its nascent stage, Tech Pac is identifying vendors who can be added to this portfolio and will structure this business as it grows.

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