ESET zooms in on IT retail channel

MUMBAI, INDIA: Pursuant to its strategy to tap SMB and SOHO customers in India, security solutions provider ESET is working out an aggressive thrust for its retail boxes. To do this the company will be appointing new sub- distributors who will then cater to the retailers in various geographies.

“In order to better cater to the burgeoning SMB and SOHO sectors in India, we have decided to add more retailers to our network,” said Parvinder Walia, channel marketing manager-APAC, ESET. “To do this better, our exclusive distributor-ESS Software Distribution and Consulting, will empower their regional distributors to appoint more sub-distributors.”

Sharing details, Amit Mishra, MD, ESS Software Distribution and Consulting said that his company is still working out the finer details on whether these sub-distributors would be appointed on a regional, state-wise or city-wise levels. “If you are talking about eastern India, then it's a very small region. We might have just one distributor who will take care of the whole region there, but this might not be true for the other geographies. We are in the process of finalizing these details clearly and we expect the final call to be taken soon.”

Mishra also noted that while they will be engaging with large format retailer chains for these retail products, their main focus will be on the IT retail channel partners. He explained this decision saying, “In the smaller cities, customers often get the details of the product from LFRs and end up buying it from their local dealers. This is true, even for low-value products like anti-virus software.” ESET is also concentrating on training its resellers through periodic seminars for the channel's technical and sales staff.

Recently, ESET had an international agreement with Intel wherein the latter will distribute ESET security software products with Intel-branded desktop motherboards starting in Q1 2010. Now ESET is trying to see if it can have similar alliances with the local manufacturers of IT machines in India. “We have received some proposals on tying up with indigenous computing manufacturers where our solutions will be sold along with the machines,” said Walia, but he refused to divulge any names.

The company also plans to launch its security solutions for mobile devices in the country within the next six months. For this it will also create a new channel of telecom sellers. “These things are on the anvil, but we have not decided when we will launch the mobile security solutions,” Walia commented.