12 Best Channel Partners

The DQ Channels recognizes 12 best channel partners after running a survey across India over the profiles of tier-2, 3 & 4 partners based on their credit policy, revenue & market performance

Puneet Dhir, Dhir & Co, Jalandhar

Not only has Jalandhar-based Puneet Dhir grown his business (Dhir & Co) by 40% during 2012, he was also instrumental in espousing various channel causes throughout the year. Being actively involved in the working of the local Jalandhar Computer Dealers Association (JCDA) for the last 10 years having served as joint secretary, treasurer, executive member and general secretary in the association, Dhir loves to be a part of different social and development projects and has never shied away from an opportunity to help people and organizations.
 
In 2012, he and his team at JCDA were instrumental in the formation of the Punjab Association of Computer Traders (PACT) along with nine other associations of the state. Rattled by the growing number of theft cases in Punjab, PACT was formed to address the common issues of computer dealers across Punjab like regular thefts at computer showrooms and other frauds.
 
Under Dhir's guidance, PACT also took on Microsoft during the year whereby a resolution was passed to boycott Microsoft products across Punjab. This decision was taken in protest of registration of raid cases by Microsoft against the dealers. Subsequently, PACT took the lead to sign an MoU with Microsoft to resolve partner grievances.

Manoj Agarwal, E-Connect Solutions, Udaipur

Having started as a small software development firm for SMEs, Udaipur based E-Connect Solutions (ECPL) has become the fastest growing system integration solution in Rajasthan in 2012 under the leadership of Manoj Agarwal. Despite being in a relatively small city like Udaipur, E-Connect was the first to move in to newly opened IT park in Udaipur and also the first channel partner in the state to employ 300 people.
 
Not just in Rajasthan, ECPL was also one of the first SIs in the country to focus strongly on cloud adoption in the government in 2012. There are a couple of success stories here-one as services for Uttaranchal government and another for the Punjab State excise liquor industry. There are 14 distilleries which are connected with ECPL's data center and at the Patiala headquarter of Excise department.
 
Last year in the services business, the company did 80% from government projects and the rest from corporate, where in the system business, it did 30% of government business and the rest from large automation companies like Rockwell Automation, Larsen & Toubro, Secure Meter, Hindustan Zinc and other cement companies like JK Cement.

Vikas Dewan, Strategic Marketing, Dehradun

Vikas Dewan is not just a well-known channel partner of Dehradun and secretary of state IT association UITTA, he is almost synonymous as the face of IT in Uttarakhand. While his company Strategic Marketing is largely into the business of providing solutions to corporate and government (as has been the norm in Uttarakhand), his association team has been actively working towards resolving issues like vendor and dealer disputes, fraud cases and other activities.
 
Dewan was instrumental in organizing the three-day long ‘IT Vision 2013' expo that proved to be a major draw with close to about 1.5 lakh plus visitors visiting the event. He has also been working on leveraging the potential sectors of growth in the state, primarily government and education. The menace of check bouncing and fly-by-night operators has grappled the channel partners for long in Uttarakhand and Dewan and his association team has waged a crusade to bring solace to aggrieved parties in most cases.

KL Lalani, Lalani Infotech, Kolkata

New blood seems to have paid off well for Lalani Infotech (LI) which registered a growth rate of 20% in the last financial year, thanks to its repositioning and ongoing endeavors taken up by Umang Lalani, director, LI, and son of KL Lalani.
 
With major focus on HP, Dell, and AOC, besides its regular interest in Canon and Fullmark, the new brand additions are likely to take the top line this financial year to an estimated `250 crore. The company has considerably concentrated on its own peripheral brand, Kanry, expanding the product base to include specialty office products like document laminators, paper shredders and other automation products.
 
In terms of its financial break-up, LI, like most of the eastern companies, had a good Q4 earning of `59.8 crore followed by Q2 at `56.4 crore. The other two quarters were evenly spread. Direct distribution revenue (ie, direct retailer or reseller billing), however, comprised of 50% of its total earnings dipping this year by a few points. The effect is attributed to its deliberate plans for consolidation in the channels. Unlike other prominent distributors in the East, LI has not limited itself to distribution and retail only, but has also ventured into computer education and other related fields. The most important fact, however, is that LI is not just a 100% distribution company, but its revenues are spread across important verticals like SME, SOHO and BFSI, together accounting for 30% of the income.

Gaurav Goel, Eastern Logica Infoway, Kolkata

Eastern Logica Infoway (ELIL) posted a remarkable 30% y-o-y growth with its focus centering on West Bengal only. ELIL, however, has pulled up its sleeves with major brands like Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Seagate featuring as top priorities for the company.
 
Its experiment with Samsung monitors got it a higher top line with ELIL becoming the ‘highest seller of Samsung monitors' in the east, besides its retail award from Microsoft for being the winner of the Microsoft Software Campaign series. ELIL bills 60% of the total Samsung monitors in West Bengal, making it a preferred partner for the vendor in the East.
 
As far as new product lines and brands are concerned, ELIL took up the sub-distribution of HCL tablets and became a Direct Partner for Sony's Vaio series that won it much appreciation in its direct retail segment. This year, after its successful stint with Lenovo distribution, ELIL took up distribution of Vaio range from Sony after terminating its distribution tie-up with Lenovo. However, ELIL continues to be a strong player with Lenovo on the retail front.
 
So far, H2, FY12 has been most lucrative for ELIL, with this financial half contributing to `105 crore, 54.69% of the aggregate company earnings.

Devendra Taneja, MD & CEO, PC Solutions

"Realization of every great dream is the result of unbreakable patience and strong determination" - this guiding philosophy of Devendra Taneja inspired him to carve a dream into reality known as PC Solutions. A visionary leader and a key motivator, Taneja's relentless efforts and fortitude have led PC Solutions since 1988 towards pinnacle of success. His unwavering resolution to provide customized and client friendly end-to-end solutions globally, provide the organization with a distinct inclination to serve the customer in a flexible and responsible manner.

Under his leadership, PC Solutions is continuously evolving by upgrading human skills and compentencies along with an upgradation in IT services and infrastructure offered to customers. He is respected across the industry for his strong business ethics, strategy moves which focus on bottom lines and his ability to develop people through empowerment.

Today PC Solutions stands strong on `1.72 billion revenue from products, IT technology solutions and services. Undoubtedly, it is his and the team's hard work accompanied by meticulous planning that has expanded the business into new dimensions. He is the spearhead in the global strategic partner development, industry associations and business plans. Thanks to his foresightedness, the company has also become a part of the recently formed AllTimeIT Solutions, a conglomerate of leading IT based IT infrastructure service providers and system integrators.

Asif Khan, Technocrat Infotech, Kolkata

Growing at pace with the market at a steady rate of 21%, Technocrat Infotech (TI) has emerged as one of the giants in the East, with principals like Epson, Gigabyte, G-Data, HP, HCL and A-Data as its major top line earners. In 2012, company banked heavily on the ‘exclusive' factor in terms of national distribution, expanding its reach not only across the eastern channels, but spreading and strengthening across Delhi, Northeast India, Mumbai, Jaipur and Raipur too.
 
While the primary slot vendors accounted for the major chunk from where revenue came in for Technocrat, regional tie-up with MMD India, the brand license holder for Philips monitors, proved beneficial accounting for atleast another `30 crore of the top line pie.
 
Last year, although Technocrat Infotech majorly focused over these principals, second slot players like Kobian, Intel, Lenovo and Seagate accounted for an estimated `65.8 crore. Apart from focusing over the expansion of product portfolio and the mix, direct channel billing increased at a good pace standing at `172 crore with its own retail division getting another `100 crore. However, in this aspect, retail still continues to occupy a steady figure in its internal portfolio, although last financial year, both retail as well as distribution were steady.

Shyam Sunder Modi, Director, Modi Infosol

A man with great conviction, Shyam Modi, has always lead from the front. He has been successfully spearheading the family run business. Under his leadership, the company has scaled to greater heights. Today, the objective of the company is to provide solutions to corporate, education, services and government sector. By bringing young guns on board, they have brought in fresh ideas and courage to tread the path, which their father and uncle were not able to do.

These young guns are Anuj Modi, Atul Modi and Vivek Modi, who are now responsible for different divisions of the business and responsible for its growth. Of course Shyam Modi overlooks them and his brother and the other director of the company, JP Modi, takes care of administration and accounts.

In the last fiscal year, the company clocked a revenue of Rs.135 crore and it is Shyam Modi's vision and mission that the company has been able to achieve such a fete. The company has already changed its mindset, which is normally very difficult to do. Now they can add more products to the business and give it as solutions. They have a very good combination of young and experience. In the long term, Modi envisions to scale up its business from sub-distribution to national distributorship in the next 5 years.

Vijay Wadhi, MD & CEO, Locuz Enterprise Solutions

Having more than 20 years of experience in the IT space, Vijay Wadhi is a successful entrepreneur having started and succeeded in 2 ventures earlier. He brings in leadership and financial discipline in the organization.

He is an MBA by qualification, and has attended various short term executive training programs conducted by Business Schools (IIM-A) and other professional organizations. His subjects of interest are Business Strategy, Human Resources & Finance.

His success lies in finding, growing and retaining key talent in the organization. He is passionate about building a highly HR friendly organization, and is key in driving Locuz towards PCMM Level-5 status with the objective of making Locuz an ‘Employer of Choice'. He has given several lectures in various forums on Leadership, 7-Habits, Empowerment and Time management.

Wadhi has been responsible for turning around things in the favor of the company. This is the reason why even in the tough times, Locuz closed their accounts book for FY12 with a revenue turnover of `175 crore of which `33 crore had to be taken outside the books for working capital reasons. During the year, the growth has been moderate throughout 12 months and there were no ups and downs quarter-wise.

Vikas Hisariya, CEO, Vishal Peripherals

Vikas Hisariya has been a very successful entrepreneur. Within a decade of establishment of his Hyderabad based company, it has made marvelous numbers, becoming one of the top channel partners of the state. The biggest strength of the company is its young and dynamic team. Be it CEOs Vikas and Vishal or the employees, gray hairs are difficult to spot in the organization. Even though the financial figures for FY11 were not available, the `135 crore turnover in FY12 implicates that the partner has done good amount of business in the fiscal, which was challenging enough for most of the channel partners in Andhra Pradesh due to the Telangana agitations.

The channel partner has big plans for expansion in FY13. However, the partner maintains that it is not going to impact the growth of their dealers. The partner has planned to venture into the upcountry region by opening exclusive showrooms only and not multi-brands, so that it does not affect the growth of their dealers. Today, Vishal Peripherals has assumed a leadership role, having one of the strongest brand names in the Retail segment in Andhra Pradesh with an exemplary track record in terms of products on offer, customer centric integrity and a solid commitment to service.

Sampath Kumar, CEO, Valuepoint Systems

Bengaluru-based Valuepoint Systems has steadily grown in the systems integration business, One person responsible for spearheading all these efforts is none other than Sampath Kumar, who is working with a mission to bring the company on the global map.

Sure-footed, sensible and always practical, Sampath is the Co-founder and CEO of Valuepoint Systems. He is instrumental in building the organization from grass root level, right from setting up the team for business development to excelling in client management. He has brought large enterprise and corporate clients, both from multinational as well as domestic companies to Valuepoint. Sampath has also brought in leading brands across the industry segments to Valuepoint and retained them throughout.

He has played quite an instrumental role in nurturing the company since the day one. Today, Valuepoint provides complete IT infrastructure solutions to varied customers to ensure smooth flow of day-to-day operations. Since its inception, Valuepoint Systems has constantly helped companies to identify, procure, implement and support their' IT infrastructure needs, apart from helping them network and communicate in a manner that is highly efficient and effective.

Anantharam Varayur, MD, Webcom Information Technology

Anantharam V Varayur, MD, WEBCOM Information Technology started the company in 1989 along with his wife Sumathy and his mentor and trainer Ravi Hebbalkar. The company, initially called as Micro-Tech Computer Services, is among the top few South Indian companies offering end-to-end integrated networking solutions. The company also forayed into security and surveillance in 2007 along with computer hardware, peripherals and accessories.

Hailing from Bengaluru, Anatharam, a diploma holder in electronics, started his career in 1985 with HCL in Bengaluru. With major public sectors and defense organizations as its clients, the company has implemented some of the best networks in South India.  Anantharam is personally CCNA, CCDA certified in Cisco Products, DCNA- Dlink certified network associate, MILESTONE Certified Platinum Partner, and also got certified on IBM Servers, which gave him enough opportunity and trust of the customers.

Apart from WEBCOM, Anantharam has also started Business Network International (BNI) in Bengaluru, along with 2 other entrepreneurs. Here, many business people from different verticals meet and exchange business referrals. This works on the principle of Givers Gain.