Rashi Peripherals: The Real Value Added Distributor

Several distribution houses played crucial role in the development in the ICT industry in India. However, Rashi Peripherals is a distributor that has grown with growth of the channel. Established in 1989 and prospered under the dynamic leadership of Suresh Pansari, Rashi Peripherals is one of the top five national distributors in the country. Banking on its strong  channel network and plethora of offerings, Rashi Peripherals has gained goodwill among the partner community.

Dynamic leadership

Suresh Pansari, CMD, Rashi Peripherals became distributors of ICT products in the late 90s when hardware and assembling market started progressing. Pansari started his business in a small office and with limited staff. Today, Rashi Peripherals has widened its reach through its 53 branches and 58 centers and more than 9000 partners in 750 cities. Rashi has grown consistently over the years @ CAGR of 29% with revenue of 360 Million USD / Rs.2180 crores for FY 2013-14.

Strong Channel Network

The biggest strength of Rashi Peripherals lies in its strong channel network and wide partner base. Pansari’s vision to offer best quality product to channel and customers and consistently focus on improvisation resulted in path breaking success for Rashi Peripherals.

“Channel is our bread and butter. We consistently focus on adding 200-500 partners every year. We aim to spread our partner base up to 10000 channel partners”, says Pansari.

The uniqueness about Rashi’s partner base is that its 20 percent its partners come from non IT background. Rashi’s flagship event CBF enabled the company to lay the foundation stones for a strong and a lasting relationship with partners. Commenced in 2005, CBF is the forum for partners that aim to educate and inform them about the latest and upcoming product trends in the IT ecosystem.

Rashi organizes road shows, apart from several partner incentive schemes encourage partners to give their best performance. Rashi has a dedicated team of 300+ sales and marketing professionals who help in building the brand and strong channel engagement.

A pure distributor

At a time when certain distributors are launching their own product offerings, Pansari wishes to stick with his pure distribution business. Like any other Indian entrepreneur Pansari do have plans to contribute towards PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India campaign’ but in a different way.

“We are the pure distributor. Our core focus is distribution. We do have a plan to enter into manufacturing, but indirectly, with our vendors”, says Pansari.

Pansari looks at emerging technologies not as disruption, but new growth areas. He says that in emerging geographies like India, every technology gets its share of cheese.

“In India all segments are growing and each segment has its own share of profit. When notebook and smart phones came on the market it opened new avenues for business. However, the desktop still has its prominence. Similarly, Cloud came in picture to address increasing demand for storage and data. However, storage enterprises still exist”, says Pansari.

IT the evergreen business

Having experience of nearly 30 years in IT, Pansari has closely seen the changing business patterns and channel behavior. He is very optimistic about growth in the channel. He strongly feels that the online market place will not eliminate the traditional channel.

“IT is the evergreen business. It is an integral part of all sectors. People are here because they make money. Hardly there is anyone who has gone out of business and those who have gone out, they have gone due to their mismanagement”, says Pansari.

“Channel has very bright future in IT in the coming years. The channel is growing on top line and bottom lines. Box movers who invest both time and money will see a bright future ahead”, Pansari adds.

Pansari forecast huge business opportunities in the area of Mobility.

“Mobility will grow double than the IT. I estimate that it will grow 7 to 10 percent. Flavor of growth will come from Mobility. It will be our efforts that how do we grab the opportunity and try value addition” he says.

With changing trends in the technology, Rashi Peripherals are also equipping itself by adopting emerging technologies like Cloud and bringing big brands like Apple on board. The company is consolidating and expanding its infrastructure across the country to have a more strong relationship with a number of partners.