Neoteric Infomatique moved into a new head office from its earlier establishment in an industrial estate. This move mirrored the company's decision to portray itself as a national distributor who is interested in creating demand generation for the brands it distributes, rather than a box pushing company. This differentiation strategy seems to have helped, as the company grew by 39% for the second year running, which is above the industry.

Paras Shah, MD, Neoteric Infomatique believes that this success has come due to the intense deliberation undertaken before signing on a new product or a brand. His philosophy is to sign up those products that are selling well in the international market, but need a push to take off in India.

This is why it decided to distribute Epson photo printers, despite the perception that these products are high-priced and niche. Neoteric is confident that as digicams and online printing proliferates, the demand for photo printers will also accelerate. "We invest in those products that are uncommon now, because we want to become the de facto supplier, when it becomes a mass device," says Paras.

This is precisely why Neoteric started a lifestyle product division last fiscal for products like MP3 players, digicams and webcams. It increased its focus on retail partners as well as online sales through platforms like www.baazee.com. It also added AMD as a vendor.

Though Neoteric added 1,000 partners last fiscal, to its earlier 4,000 dealer network, it has a well-defined policy for channel addition. Selection of partner is done only after researching which brands he is selling, cross referencing credentials with peers, financial stability and business standing in the market. The same process is followed for extending credit to these partners.

Last fiscal, Neoteric focused on C- and D-class cities with roadshows to create better brand pull for its vendors. It also worked harder to make NeoCare, its third party service business arm, get more brands under its banner. Currently NeoCare is present in 20 cities and the company wants to soon tie up with franchisees to expand it further. It services almost 80% of the brands it distributes.

In a bid to become a distributor of international stature, Neoteric started doing business in Nepal, Dubai and Singapore in 2003-04 and will add Bangladesh and Sri Lanka this fiscal.

The company has also created independent sales teams for each product, so that there is a clear of focus. Currently, 110 of its 228 employees are involved in sales, while 40 members are dedicated for NeoCare. It is placing its bets on digital imaging, pre-press and storage solutions to maintain a growth of 30% in the current fiscal as well.

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