It was the congregation of the people who actually made IT happen in India and the occasion was the sixth DQ Week Channel awards night at Delhi's Park Intercontinental. With around 500 leading IT distributors and channel partners from NCR and 28 other cities from Northern India- some from as far as Kanpur and Srinagar, there was no doubt that domestic IT market had finally started picking up in the country.

Congratulating the channel partners on their role in realizing the domestic market growth dream in his opening remarks, publisher of DQ Week and CyberMedia India MD Pradeep Gupta said, "This is possibly the first time when there is a lot of activity on the domestic sector. All this is possible because of this vibrant channel community and I am sure that exciting times are ahead for all of us."

Talking about the rising piracy rate in India, Government of Delhi chief secretary S Regunathan-the chief guest for the DQ Week Awards Night-in his key note address, however, cautioned that piracy continued to be the biggest hurdle in the growth of the country's IT industry. He called upon the channel partners to help fight the menace. "A country like India cannot afford to encourage piracy. We must come forward to reduce piracy levels in the Indian hardware and software segment. Channels
being an integral part of this community should come forward by not selling pirated software or hardware," Regunathan said.

Earlier, during his presentation Samsung India VP Vivek Prakash talked about the impact of abolition of the eight percent excise duty on computers as announced in the Budget 2004-05. "I don't think that there would be a big reduction in the PC prices due to the zero excise duty and hence the assemblers do not need to worry about competition from the branded manufacturers," he said categorically.

The awards function started with awards being given to the best channel partners for cities across North India, covering nine states.

In Jammu and Kashmir, Baggage Computers from Srinagar and AGM Sales Corporation from Jammu got the award. In Himachal Pradesh, Ace Infotech from Shimla got the award.

In Uttar Pradesh, while MKG Infotech was given the best channel partner award from Agra, Stek Systems bagged the award for Allahabad. In Meerut, Foretek Systems made a hat trick by winning the award for the third year in succession.

Other award winners included Commexcell Technologies from Kanpur, Sigma IT Super Store from Lucknow, Jwala Distributors from Varanasi, Hari Computer Center from Jhansi and Jalan Distributors from Gorakhpur.

In Uttaranchal, its capital Dehradun was covered and the award went to JP Sales Computers. In Rajasthan, Frontine Computers from Jodhpur bagged the channel partner award. Tayal Software from Udaipur and Vishnu Computer Land from Jaipur were also awarded as best channel partners.

From Chattisgrah, State Merlin Multitech from Raipur bagged the award.

In Haryana Computer Touch from Ambala scored a hat trick by winning the award for the third time, while Computer City from Panipat also bagged the award.

In Punjab, Super Dot Computers from Jalandhar got the best channel partner award, while SK Trading from Ludhiana, Forte System from Patiala and NV computers from Amritsar were also awarded.

In Chandigarh, Astral Computer System was awarded as the best channel partner. In MP, Coral Business System won the award from Bhopal, while Pioneer Sales Service from Jabalpur also won the award. Marquis computer from Gwalior was also awarded and Business Automation & Veltronics India were joint-winners from Indore.

In the NCR, Aadhar Computers from Ghaziabad and Jain Peripherals from Gurgaon got the award.

The DQ Week awards for Delhi had four categories: retailer, systems integrator, and reseller and sub-distributor. The best retailer award went to SD computer, while Trifin Technologies bagged the runner up award. PC Solutions was the winner under the system integration category, while the runner up was Team Computers.

The best reseller award was given to Baba Computers, while the runner up award went to Frontline Information System. Comnet Vision bagged the best sub distributor award, while the runner up award went to Park electronics.

The DQ Week Group Editor Prasanto K Roy delivered the vote of thanks.

CyberMedia News
New Delhi

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