Lack of Unity Impacts Durgapur Partners

Many of you must have heard name of Durgapur city. It is third largest city in West Bengal and is situated in Burdwan district. Its famous as steel city of West Bengal, and also its been witnessing radical changes, along with rapid development in segments like industry, real estates, I.T. and I.T.E.S. firms, education etc.

Industrial sector in Durgapur

Durgapur is second planned city in India. In whole eastern belt it is the most industrialised city as well.  Durgapur has a whole array of manufacturing industries. Among them, Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) (SAIL) and Alloy Steel Plant (ASP) (Sail) are the two major ones around which the city and the other industries came up. There are a number of power plants, chemical and engineering industries and many small scale factories. Among them Durgapur Projects Limited (DPL), DTPS, DVC are well known.

Tourism sector in the city

As an industrial township Durgapur has many places which attract tourist. Main attractions in the city are its temples and park while modern city replete with malls, cineplexes and most 'A list' luxuries. Durgapur Barrage, Steel plant, Rahreswar Shibtola, Kumaramangalam park, Triloka park, Garh Jungle, kali mandir are quite some places to visit on a weekend trip. Best visiting months are October to February.

Education sector

Durgapur has many nationally famous schools and colleges. City is home to NIT, Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, National Power Training Institute, National Institute of Management and many others education institute.

IT market in city

IT market in Durgapur is in well known place Benachity Bazaar and city centre. But as we spoke about growth in IT market to the channel partners situated in Durgapur, we see lots of restlessness and less enthusiasm in their approach. why there is no happening in IT markets? why dealers are working with long faces? it’s the matter of great thinking.

The growth in IT sector that was expected is not happening. We spoke to some of the IT partners situated there and tried to know the reason behind stagnant growth in IT markets. First of all its necessary to give the fact that number of IT resellers are very less that they can be counted on fingers and business has also dropped at the steep rate due to various reasons.

Bimal Kumar Jain of Business Partner commented that, “one of the biggest reason behind stale growth is that we are less in numbers and if we have some issues we could not take it to a proper channel as we don’t have any sort of IT association in the city.”

Now the question is that, not having an IT association is the real reason behind falling down of IT development, or it could be more.

Partners in Durgapur needs an instant solution, so that IT market should revive and benefit them. But its not a 2 minute cooking thing, they have to work on their internal issues and come together. Neeraj Agrwal, Representative and secretary of COMPASS, Computer Association of Eastern India, has very different approach to this matter, “some 4 or 4 and half years ago we brought up with an idea of yatra in small towns and gave voluntary offers to dealers to join COMPASS at very subsidized rate and learn how things work in an association and after that they integrate in the IT ecosystem of their own city. And we got great response, I don’t know what went wrong in Durgapur. As a parent we guided them, but they are ones who should come forward and do things in correct way so that they get benefited. But we are once again focusing on small town and also planning to do yatra for integrating ideas to small town dealers.”

Durgapur at a glance

No. of resellers- few (not founded correct data)

IT association- no association

IT market- Benachity and City Centre

Interview

Shivaji Sinha, owner of 4^th Dimension

What’s happening in the IT market of Durgapur these days?

Shivaji- IT business is slow here. Its true that we don’t have an IT association in the city, and it is a matter of great concern. However there are couple of people who are member of COMPASS. But when we have any issue where should we go and there is another problem i.e there is lack of unity among dealers.

Another reason of decline is online business, our offline business is badly disturbed by online business, and education sector has shifted, which has resulted in shifting of student purchasing to Kolkata.