"We Provide IT Solutions Across India Through Exclusive High-Performance Systems To SME, Midmarket, BFSI & Government Organizations"

In a chat with VARINDIA, Aniruddha Menavlikar, Director, Monarch Technologies discusses the company, its growth drivers, the services and solutions, the digital transformation journey etc.

Please give us a little brief about yourself and the company.

Monarch Technologies started as a partnership firm in 1987 and grew into a Private Limited company in April 1996 as Monarch Technologies (Pune) Pvt. Ltd. Our primary aim is to provide IT Solutions across India through exclusive high-performance systems to SME, Mid-Market, BFSI & Government organizations. In the initial years, we sold assembled personal computers and were authorized dealers for many prominent companies Over time with increased market expectations our focus shifted to high end computing, storage and server products partnering with IBM and then with Lenovo post its acquisition in 2005. Along the way we also expanded our horizon to other complimenting IT products and verticals.

Briefly explain your business model and what drives your YOY growth. Why would your customers select you over your competitors?

We currently have a large presence in the distribution business for commercial products and IT Solutions & Service Provider for SME, Mid-Market, BFSI & government organizations.

Our IT Solutions business caters to virtualization, security & storage solutions and in-house software

applications for the private industry and government organizations. We offer end to end solutions in Virtualization, Backup Solutions, DC/DR Solutions, Cloud Solutions, Hyper Converged solutions,

Networking & Security Solutions with partners like Lenovo, Nutanix, Cisco, Aruba, VMware etc. In the distribution business we have a strong reseller network with 1000+ partners.

Our in-house developed softwares comprising eGovernance suite of applications has been successfully deployed and used across various large government organizations. We have recently also acquired a large end to end solutions business with our eGovernance suite of applications and expect phenomenal growth in the near future. The key factors that drive our year-on-year growth in the IT industry includes consistency, reliability, adaptability and innovation with latest trends in technology.

What is the most preferred brand/product by your customer and do they opt for any additional services? During the pandemic, how have you supported customers to ensure that the IT workforce runs smoothly and how will this change now that offices are re-opening?

The most preferred brand by our customers is Lenovo with a demand for multiple allied solutions with Lenovo Think Servers, ThinkPad, ThinkCentre & ThinkStation products. We provide end-to-end system integration services to our partners, as well as to our corporate and government clients. In the last few years we have successfully completed large infrastructure projects with Hyper Converged Solutions, Networking Projects, AV Integration Projects and implemented large data centers in Corporate, Banking & Government domains. During the pandemic period we saw a drastic increase in demand for laptops for WFH scenarios. The reason we were able to successfully fulfill our customer demands was only due to the exclusive support we received from the Lenovo team. Additionally, our customers, IT workforce and admin teams were under tremendous pressure to maintain business continuity during the pandemic & post pandemic period. We offered them end- to- end solutions, along with Lenovo Premier Support, for better TAT from the Lenovo Service Team. Cloud based VDI solutions or On Premise VDI solutions were provided which helped in pressure situations. We also provided Lenovo Device Intelligence (LDI) Solutions to some customers. This solution benefited their IT Admin teams to be proactive in their ability to support their end-users and monitor device trends as well as forecast hardware or software issues in advance.

What kind of services and solutions do you provide your customers? Do you see a higher preference for a particular service or solution by them?

We provide complete end-to-end solutions to our customers. We take a consulting approach while proposing any solution to a customer. In case of any new technology, we do a POC initiative and then prepare the design of the solution. We have implemented datacenter provisioning with computation, storage & virtualization/ hyper converged solutions for some large customers. We have also implemented the state-of-the-art unified communication platform of Crestron which has aided our customers to transform their home office to a collaboration platform with an all-in-one meeting solution.

How was your digital transformation journey and what opportunities can you foresee for the SMB business?

Our digital transformation journey has been both positive and negative. Digital transformation is often used to boost agility and operational efficiency. Initially we faced some issues with security of data in the WFH scenario. However, the transformation has overtime benefited us in terms of cost saving, revenue growth, flexibility & improving efficiency. As a way ahead, we are targeting the SME segment for expansion of business & trying to position the best possible solutions as per our customers’ expectations. During the time of the pandemic, we saw the opportunity to shift our customers to SAAS model/Cloud solutions and foresee a big leap in this direction.