By Anurag Agrawal on Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Category: Channel Partners

IT Channel Complexities in India

Mature markets are just around the corner in India.

Challenges in SMB (1-250 employees) segment for IT Vendors:

Advice in Partner selection criteria:

New Technologies:

Takeaway:

The government departments are also in the process of implementing various IT related program primarily for the SMB segment(1-250 employees) especially. This is being considered as the most potential segment in terms of IT growth and expansion.

The grey areas are the SMB and the government. Here the implementation has just begun and it will take another 4-5 years. Today SMB is the very large and the most potential segment and challenge lies in how to deal with them and their needs. The knowledge level of these companies/ this segment is very low as compared to the International markets and standards. The IT deployment in terms of products and human resource is very low and they are dependent on the IT vendors. A lot of knowledge has to go in educating these segments.

Channel partners are investing heavily in Data Centers but it will take time to develop as all the technologies are new.

The channel partners who are at the local level at Tier III & IV cities overall do not have much knowledge base as the bigger partners in the Tier I & II cities, so  they ultimately end up in Box selling. Even the customers of Tier II, III & IV are not well-educated and their understanding level for IT is low. A lot of education has to happen in these cities.

THE IT VENDOR MUST KNOW ITS AUDIENCE FIRST…

Gitika Bajaj
Techaisle