Distribution has its own charm!

Do tell us something about the journey of your company? 

Cyberstar Infocom (P) Ltd. is one of the emerging distributors of IT products in the Indian market. In the decade-long operations, Cyberstar has now expanded its operation to include 20 branch offices with stocking warehouse in order to reach out to its valued channel partners across the country. 

We are backed by a highly professional and motivated team spread across the country. We offer our customers with best quality products, technical support, marketing and training programmes, and post-sales service. For our vendors, we act as a value-added sales force, leveraging our well-qualified team, technical capabilities, logistic services and customer relationships to distribute their products in the most cost-effective manner. 

What kind of solutions and services do you provide to differentiate yourselves from those of your competitors?

We are the distributor of IT products and peripherals pan India. Going forward, under the new growth plan, Cyberstar plans to distribute more volume products to garner a higher topline and balance economies of scale

We differentiate ourselves from our competitors through our ability and willingness to focus on smaller customers in B, C and D class locations across India, thereby engaging the SME market in India which is the fastest-growing segment in the country. Our entrepreneurial culture coupled with fast and flexible decision-making process ensures a shortest turnaround time to process orders. We engage ourselves in top management mindshare, provide individual focus to every product we carry in our portfolio and facilitate business development with the help of our vendors.  We believe in tight operational control and leverage IT for quick decision-making and business intelligence.

Which are the brands you are associated with?

Our portfolio covers a wider range of IT products and peripherals which include A-Data, Hitachi, Alvarion, Creative, Adaptec, Belkin, HP Procurve, HP ODDs, WatchGuard, Wep and Panduit. Recently, Cyberstar has entered into a partnership with Wipro Infotech for distribution of their range of servers, laptops and PCs. With this new relationship, we aim to get into the laptop and PC business in a big way. 

Have you signed any major partnerships recently?

Recently, Cyberstar has tied up with Best Power Equipment (BPE), a leading provider of strategic power solutions, dealing with the latest range of “Fully Digital” UPS Solutions for a wide range of environments, including Home, Enterprise, IT & ITeS, industrial and critical equipments, as the national distributor for its products.

Not only this, we have extended support to Hitachi in its endeavour to provide improved Hitachi RMA (return material authorization) service to dealers and end-customers in India and address their warranty and support issues at the earliest. We always strive to go the extra mile and offer our vendors extensive support to enable them to provide superior service to their customers. We are certain that we as Hitachi’s national distributors can help Hitachi RMA service to emerge as the most flexible and fastest service in India for its customers. We would provide support to Hitachi customers in solving their product-related problems in the event of a delay and providing replacements for their damaged products immediately on receiving customer queries.

Throw some light on the channel business of your company. Do you engage your partners in regular training programmes to get them accustomed to the latest technologies and solutions?

Cyberstar caters to the Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities across the country.More than 60% of our business is from the Channels and we do engage our partners in training and technology where necessary and involve the vendors also to provide them with professional quality technology and product training. 

What kind of challenges you face while operating in a competitive market like India?

In today's scenario, national distributors are sourcing and selling globally, while having to maintain localized availability and customer service levels. Faced with expanding inventories, geographies and value-added services, distributors must find new ways of adding value to their customers and, at the same time, maintain profitability. We have to do more with less across an increasingly complex operating environment which is the greatest challenge for us.

Where would you like to see your company in the next 3-5 years?

We are gearing ourselves to achieve a turnover of Rs.1,000 crore by 2013. As a first step, the company plans to embark upon a brand repositioning exercise. Cyberstar has earmarked a sizable marketing budget to increase brand visibility and channel partner connect across Tier 1/2/3 reseller markets in India. 

Having built strong foundations over the last decade of our existence, we are well positioned to capitalize on the emerging growth opportunities in the IT distribution channel over the next three years. Balancing aggressive top line volume growth with bottom line operational efficiencies through economies of scale is our topmost priority to reach our target of Rs.1,000 crore in the next three years.

For more contact :
beenish@varindia.com