|
How big is the Hubli IT market?
The Hubli IT market is moderately big with an approximate sale of around 1000 laptops a month. The movement of laptops has been high in the past few months.
The Association of Information Technology, Hubli-Dharwad has around 43 members now. We are planning to increase the number to around 100, which will include only VAT registered businesses. Some of the resellers from nearby towns are expected to join our association.
What are the drivers for IT growth?
The Hubli-Dharwad area has a number of small industries, it is also one of the education belts of Karnataka having a large number of engineering, medical and management institutes. While 30 percent contribution comes from the education segement, the SMBs contribute 35 percent, with the rest being accounted by home segment.
What are the buying trends?
For many years, the market has been assembler driven. However, presently number of brands such as Acer, HP and Lenovo are also available. Demand for notebooks is picking up. We do not have industries or large corporate companies here and hence there is no specific demand for enterprise computing products.
What are the key challenges facing resellers?
Biggest challenge is the influx of traders from Bangalore market to this region. The resellers and sub-distributors from Bangalore are often seen to be very aggressive, and often discount their back-end rebates, lowering market operating prices here.
Post-sales support issues have come down, since most distributors have set up base here, and many vendors have service centers in our city.
What are the major activities organized by your association?
We are planning to distribute a magazine free to educate in order to help channels understand opportunities better. Financial discipline is an issue that plagues our market. We are planning to come up with strong measures to ensure better financial discipline by blacklisting serial defaulters. We also plan to have an annual exhibition from 2009. |