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Ramnath Desu
Ram Computers
Anantapur
How big is the Anantapur IT market?
We have a small market in Anantapur with around 30-40 resellers across the district, selling around 300-400 PCs monthly. Anantapur district is a large district, and it constitutes of several small towns such as Kadiri, Puttaparthi and Hindapur which are 50-100 kms away from each other.
What are the drivers for IT growth?
Since the economy is largely agrarian, the market is largely driven by home users and government offices. Approximately 70 percent of the demand comes from home and SOHO segments. Demand is largely dependent on the power situation, especially in the rural area. Since the situation has improved recently, there is demand for PCs across the district.
A large project called Science City was supposed to come up in the district. This has been delayed; however, we expect increased investment after its completion; this in turn will fuel the local IT market.
What are the buying trends?
For many years, assembled PCs ruled the roost. However of late, sales of number of brands such as Acer, HP and Lenovo have also picked up. An inclination towards notebooks has also been witnessed. Due to the absence of industries or corporate offices, there is no specific demand for enterprise computing products.
What are the key challenges facing resellers?
Perhaps the size of the market is small, and most large vendors do not have service centers here. We do not have any distributors with local offices here. The nearest locations for after sales service are either Vijayawada or Hyderabad. Many parts of the district are closer to Bangalore, and consumers prefer to buy from Bangalore, while we depend on Hyderabad or Vijyawada for our supplies. We are not able to compete with the lower prices offered by resellers from Bangalore.
What are the activities organized by your association?
We do not have an IT association as the district is quite large, and resellers are spread across the district. |