|
Asansol, West Bengal
Asansol, a coal-mining-cum-industrial centre, is the second largest city in West Bengal, after Kolkata. Being the central city for the coal belt, it is heavily industrialized, leading to its transformation into a trading town that utilizes its position as the transport centre. It houses major companies like Eastern Coalfields (a subsidiary of Coal India), IISCO, steel plant of Steel Authority of India, Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, Hindustan Cables, Disergarh Power Supply, Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), Burn Standard, Reckitt and Coleman, couple of cement plants such as Burnpur Cement, and quite a few refractory units such as Kabita Refractories. It is an important educational hub, acting as the educational centre for the entire population of the coal belt from Dhanbad to Ranigunj.
Channel Scenario
There are about 50 active resellers in Asansol selling an average 100 PCs per month. However, the city does not have any local channel body.
Opportunities
The IT market in Asansol is growing at a robust 30 per cent year-on-year, driven by demand from government sector and also from the education sector.
Being an important city, it is home to many corporate offices that generate 60 percent of the total IT demand that happens in Asansol. E-governance is another major driver for government IT spends. The State IT department has recently embarked on the West Bengal State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN) project under which Internet connectivity would be provided in remote areas. This is expected to drive the growth for networking products in the state.
Demand from public and private education sector has been soaring over the past few years. While the schools and colleges have received grants to set up advanced computer labs, the private institutes are investing in setting up Wi-Fi and a few of them have also linked their colleges with others in the country through video-conferencing.
Demand from home users and SOHO segment account for about 40 percent but has shown a considerable growth over the years. Printers are increasingly demanded from the SMB and the SOHO segment. This has given birth to toner manufacturers. Many small companies have sprung up; they re-manufacture toners and cartridges and have been successful in garnering a respectable chunk of the market. Sandip Snaghai, proprietor of Multyzone Infocomm, manufacturer of toner brand ‘RX’ says, “Our products are approximately 40 percent cheaper than the original toners, which makes it dearer to the customers. There are more than 2-3 cartridges and toner remanufacturers who run a profitable business in the city.”
Challenges
The buoyant IT market in Asansol has attracted a number of large sub-distributors from Kolkata and Siliguri to open branches leading to intense competition and thus eroding margins of local players. “The larger players from Kolkata have bigger volumes and can thus offer lower prices. This has created a dent in our revenues and margins,” complains Agrawal.
Partner profile
Anand P Sharma
CEO,
Hi Tech Computers
A philanthropic reseller
In the industrial town of Asansol, Anand P Sharma, a commerce graduate wanted to start his own business. After considerable deliberation, he decided to sell telecom products. However, he was destined for a different course; in 1995, he came across an offer from Samsung for assembling PCs. This marked his transition into IT and the birth of Hi Tech Computers. "I came across this offer of ‘Build your own PC’ by Samsung and enrolled as a business partner; thereafter there was no looking back,” recalls Sharma.
Thus, Hi Tech Computers started with Samsung as its principle vendor. Gradually, it included more brands like IBM, HP, and Lenovo in his kitty with the recent inclusion being Dell.
The company garnered revenues of Rs 3 crore last year and expects to double that this year. Nearly 70 percent of the revenues in 2007 was generated from retail and remaining from corporate and government reselling. “We have a client base of more than 100, where about 50 percent of the customers are repeat customers, who used to buy electronics from me,” says Sharma. Though, a number of deals take place through old contacts and by word of mouth, he sometimes bags the deals through tenders. Recently, the company acquired a tender of providing about 45 PCs to a technical institute. One of the big deals of this year has been of Rs 5.5 lakhs wherein he had to supply PCs and printers to its SMB client.
Presently, the company has 8 employees that provide services to corporate and home users. About 10-15 percent of the revenue still comes from system building, while the rest from branded PCs. “We have a 600 sq ft wide store in a prime location, in which about a quarter of the space has been allotted for showcasing the products," adds Sharma.
Moving ahead, Sharma plans to renovate his office, converting it into a format store and showcase more brands of laptops in its store. He says, “With this, we will be able to serve two purposes, one is to tap the increase demand for laptops by showcasing more brands and models in our store and secondly, the format store will give a new look and feel to customers, thereby attracting more footfall.”
Sharma is an avid rifle shooter and is also the lifetime member of the Asansol association. He is also actively involved with a charitable organization for disabled. He provided free PCs to all the students and also developed a website for the institute. |