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Devendra Marwah
President,
CMDA
How big is the Raipur IT market?
Raipur has 150 resellers who sell around 3,000 PCs in a month. Due to the slowdown, we have witnessed a fall in demand from all the segments. It is for this reason that the city has witnessed growth of only 20 percent this year.
What are the drivers for IT growth?
Raipur is home to a number of small agro-industries, plus coal, power and steel industries. SMBs together with SOHOs contribute about 30 percent of the total demand, with another 30 percent coming from the corporate segment. This is followed by the government segment which generates 20 percent of the demand, and the home segment, which also contributes 20 percent.
What are the buying trends?
While the corporate segment usually demands a mix of notebooks and desktops, the SMB and SOHO segments demand notebooks. Apart from this, routers and other networking devices are taken up by these segments. The home segment usually demands notebooks and other lifestyle products such as external hard drives, Web cameras, MP3 players and LCD TVs. In the last few years we have seen an increase in the adoption of notebooks compared to desktops; the current notebook-to-desktop ratio is 70:30. The home segment prefers branded PCs to assembled ones.
What are the key challenges faced by resellers?
Bad post-sales support is the main problem. Not all the vendors have their service centers in the city, and the turnaround time varies from anywhere between five to 45 days. This causes a lot of problems for us because it is not only a time-consuming process but also expensive. The city is seeing a number of qualified and trained people moving away to larger cities.
What are the activities organized by your association?
The Chhattisgarh Computer Media Dealers Association is a six-year-old organization having 90 members. The association regularly organizes meetings with vendors and tries to solve the issues and problems of the resellers. The association also organizes debates and training sessions for its partners, and organizes two annual exhibitions. |