Paras Shah
CEO
neoteric infomatique ltd.
Established in 1991, neoteric infomatique ltd. which is headquarted in Mumbai is one of India's leading value-added distributors in the IT space with a turnover of USD 250 Million in the year 2011. neoteric has generated business opportunities for 10,000 channel partners across 500 cities in India. The company caters to AV, components, consumer and memory, creative, enterprise, PC group of products and solutions. neoteric's focus segments are AV, SMB and Enterprise.
Solutions and Services @neoteric
neoteric technology solutions (NTS) the solutions arm of neoteric, is focused on enabling the channel partners to be able to pitch complete solution offerings and act as a one-stop shop for all the technology requirements. Right from consulting and solution architecting, the partners are trained and developed to manage the entire gamut of services ranging from sizing, designing, implementation, maintenance, training and certifications.
'Evolve' is a program which provides techno-commercial training to partners and their teams. The plans for the future are to develop 'Evolve' as a concept, take it to the smallest town across India and ensure partner connect.
F1, the service arm of neoteric offers a wide gamut of services which include Swap Services, Onsite services, Walk-in Services, Remote support Services and RMA/Reverse logistic Services. With its widespread reach in 105 cities, F1 ensures worry free services to all its partners and their customers. F1 is now supporting one of the leading brands in the ATM segment, 'Wincor Nixdorf'. No distribution company is serving the ATM segment at present!
Paras Shah, CEO, neoteric infomatique ltd. says, "We understand the Market needs, technology and product positioning which drive us to do value added selling. Our strong business ethics and values, along with the reach in the emerging markets and go to market approach have helped us set the milestones for us in the distribution industry."
He further adds, "neoteric's mantra and core of bringing technology next products to the customers and value addition have made it the forerunner in the market. Ethical business practices under all eventualities and maintaining integrity at all times constitute the ethos of our organization- which is also our distinguishing factor."
Managed Services, Video Conferencing, Unified Communication are the thrust areas where neoteric has set a strong foothold. The company also expects a big growth in Surveillance, where they are trying to build on.
neoteric further focuses on the corporate, SMB and the SME segment. The services business is where they are now building their competencies, wherein the objective would be to enable the partner to pitch in the focus segments and support them on the complete gamut of activities right from consultation to after- sales services.
The Channel-Partner Connect
neoteric's VAD (Value-added distributor) approach has been the key differentiator in the market for both the vendor partners as well as the Channel partners. The approach of offering complete solution to the partner, acting as a one stop destination, bringing technology-next products to the customers and being the forerunner in the market has helped the company reach where it is and achieve its unique and widely-known partner-connect.
The company is working with its partners to explore the possibility of offering managed services infrastructure especially on the hosted platforms in areas of Storage, UC and Security. The well hoisted roadshows, POC display, Partner Seminars etc are aimed at ensuring end-consumer awareness as a support to the partners and delivering enhanced value in the market.
Partner enablement being the core, the strategy lies in training the channel to interface with the customers and provide a complete solution, certify their technical team on the technical services, through its lead management services pass on qualified leads to the partners and thereby bring about a shift from box-selling to solutions selling and service offerings.
For most of the vendors neoteric has conducted/created road shows, tailor- made channel partner programs, marketing collaterals, channel-advertisements, and special incentive-based schemes.
Various innovative programs have been churned out of from the creative think tank of the company. To name a few, they have Chak De, Experience Live, Xplore and Evolve.
Handling the Challenges Intelligently
There are various challenges like rupee depreciation, high interest rate, and economy slowing down. Most of the challenges are related to the generic market situation and one of the ways the company is tackling it is to focus on the basics.
Broadly April 2011-March 2012 was a challenging fiscal year. The company focused on the basics, went back to correcting business hygiene inventory levels, channel-inventory and channel-credit. So then, Q4 was a bit of a bounce-back.
The road ahead…..
Making further headway in building a strong Security Surveillance vertical, Data Centre solution vertical, Building very strong consumer accessories portfolio with deeper retail penetration and creation of consumer vertical; neoteric also focuses strongly on implementation of GTM, operational efficiency, IT investments, strong biz hygiene focus and reviews all across at every level of every department.
