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N Srinivasan
Vice President,
Erode IT Association
How big is the Erode IT market?
Currently Erode has 70 registered resellers, who sell 500 to 1000 PCs per month. The slowdown hasn’t made a serious impact and the market has managed to sustain its year-on-year growth of 20 percent.
What are the drivers for IT growth?
The educational segment contributes 50 percent of the overall demand for IT products as there are over 30 colleges in the city—out of which 15 are engineering colleges. The home segment contributes 20 percent, corporate 15 percent and SMB segment 15 percent of the demand. Being a major textile export hub, the city also sees a lot of demand from the textile segment.
What are the buying trends?
Educational institutions fuel notebooks and desktops sales. Notebooks and desktops along with wireless data cards, TV tuner cards and MP3 players also contribute to the home demand.
The notebook to desktop sales ratio is around 70:30, but we have seen a fall in demand for notebooks in the recent times. Home users still prefer to buy assembled desktops and the ratio of assembled to branded desktop is 60:40. While the corporate segment demand includes PCs, routers and servers, the SMB segment prefers PCs, all-in-one printers and LAN products.
What are the key challenges facing resellers?
Post-sales service is a major problem we face. Most of the service centers are located in Coimbatore and Salem. Erode is equi-distance from both these cities, but it is often time consuming and expensive to take the products there for servicing. Another area of concern is payment delay from dealers as well as customers.
What are the activities organized by your association?
The 70-member Erode IT Association, affiliated to the Confed ITA, holds technical and training seminars, debates, and monthly meets to discuss challenges and issues faced by the city’s IT industry. The organization is planning to hold the annual IT Expo in September. |