Kahin khushi kahin gham for channel on Onam

COCHIN, INDIA: Channel partners in Kerala always witness a jump in sales figures during Onam season. However, this time around the happiness was not widespread, with some pockets witnessing only normal business while sales did peak in upcountry locations.

Elaborating on the trend this Onam in Cochin PK Harikrishnan, Managing Partner of Alltime Power Technologies, said, “This time, the festive season sales were not as expected. While it was record sales during the last Onam season, overall, this time the sales were normal to bad.” In line with his view, Madhusudan Gupta of Radha Electronics said, “It was much better last year.” The company deals with Compaq and Acer and sold about 50 pieces during this season. “Compaq was a fast moving brand. Compared to last year, the revenue this time is down by 20-25 percent,” he added.

Divakar Prabhu, CEO of International Marketing Company, also agreed that the sales did not peak in the festive season. “Last year was much better. Sales during this season was not as expected at all. For us Dell was the only fast moving brand,” he opined.

In a similar vein Prem Nair, CEO, Scot Technologies commented, “It was really dull this time. We were expecting to sell 50-55 digicams from our Thiruvananthapuram showroom but we were able to sell just two. The same thing happened in Cochin also where we had targeted to sell about 100 cameras but in the end managed to do only 20.”

Girish Kumar of Kollam-based Hypertech Systems was also not enthused with the festivity. He opined that the season was not good at all when compared with last year. While the company that deals in HP Compaq, Dell and Sony did manage to sell about 200 desktops and 300 laptops, “Revenue is certainly down compared with last year,” Kumar noted.



Cheers abound

However, not everyone was disillusioned. For some dealers the festivity did bring in cheer. One among them was Thomas Paul, CEO, Texas IT Solutions. The company deals in Dell and Acer and they managed to sell about 20-30 laptops/desktops in the first two days of the week-long festivity. “This time Dell was the fastest moving brand for us and even overall the sales this time were better than last year’s Onam season,” Paul said.

Concurring with the same Jaimon Joseph, CEO, Neural Networks said, “It was good sales for us, and in fact it was better than last year.”

Sukesh, CEO of Emerge Digitech shared a similar experience. He said the sales was more than expected and certainly better than last year. He deals in Acer, Wipro and Compaq and sold more than 300 pieces during this season.

The festive cheer was also evident at Computer City. Anthony Philip, CEO of the company said, “It was better for us compared with last year. We sold almost 100 pieces during the initial days. But, the downside this time is that the margins are going down.”

Joseph, CEO of ATD Automation, which deals in Dell, Acer and HCL also had a good run with the company selling about 250 pieces. They also reported an increase of 30-40 percent in their revenue this time as compared to Onam last year.

Santhosh Jose of Kozhikod-based One Zero was non-committal. While the company did manage to sell about 650 laptops/desktops during the season he opined, “Onam this year was almost the same. We did not see any big difference when compared with last year.”

K Balachandran, CEO of Thrissur-based Southern Associates however was really upbeat. The company, which deals in HP, Lenova and Dell, has five retail outlets and managed to sell about 150 laptops and 250 desktops. Summing up the situation Balachandran said, “The last two days have been wonderful.”

So while it was largely a mixed bag for the channel partners, Onam still seemed to have brought some cheer to the beleaguered IT channel community. With the festive season beginning across the country soon, whether the same will be replicated or not is something that we will have to wait and see.