When someone from the audience pointed out that vendors are usually dumping products at the end of the month at whatever price the partner wants. But the same vendor refuses to listen to them for the rest of the month. Madhav however insisted that a partner can define his price and product volume to the vendor.

Giving his own example he said that he had done that with a vendor and refused to do business until the vendor agreed to his terms. Said Madhav, “It was a difficult task and not easy but it was something that was clearly doable.”

Disagreeing with him was Ketan Barai of Kaybee Infotech said, “It is probably possible for bigger players in the market but usually vendors did what they thought was best. For most of the month they dictated the price and the volume and only when it was the month end and their sales targets are not being met, that they give the partner the price that was initially asked for in the beginning of the month.”

Partners from upcountry location felt that while vendors would always keep saying how important the market and sub disti were to them, they do not do anything for their benefit. Many partners however, felt that the discussion would only be viable if vendor company like HP participated along with national distributors.

Growth in IT market
The last session of the day was by Sanjit Sinha, Associate VP-Research, IDC India who talked about the domestic IT market and the beginning of growth 2.0. Sinha said, “In 2006, the domestic IT market grew by 22.5 percent, ITeS by 65 percent and exports by 30 percent, leading to an overall growth of 28 percent.”

Talking about the segments that are likely to grow he said, “Healthcare, banking, financial services, health insurance, retail and transportation were the segments that would show most traction. “

Summarizing the growth points Sinha said, “Firstly identify the structural shifts and align yourself holistically. The key drivers in enterprises is dynamic IT. Evolve your offering in line with the three layers or three operating principals of dynamic IT. Have patience with the consumer markets. Moving beyond certain segments/ verticals/ geography is the need of the hour and lastly you need to keep an on the developments in the economy and seriously devise a plan to handle manpower attrition and rising salary costs and increase productivity.”

The day also saw presentations by Samsung India, Microsoft India, Su-Kam, Delta Energy Systems, TVSE, Supertron and Gigabyte who were the sponsors of the event.

After a hard day of sessions, the evening was reserved for some fun and music. It started off by a presentation from Xerox. After that partners were entertained with some fabulous Bollywood dances and acrobatic acts. The party which rocked till the wee hours of the night saw partners taking to the floor and jiving away to the dance numbers belted out by the resident DJ. The highlight of the evening was a performance by Rakesh Jain of Supreme Computers Chennai who sang some soulful ditties of Kishore Kumar.

Most of the participants were already looking forward to the next Disty Summit and had requested The DQ Week team to keep them posted on the dates, so they could be there without fail.

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