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Exclusive Interview: Harikrishna Prabhu, Director, TechnoBind Solutions

TechnoBind solutions is the first Specialist Distributor in the Indian IT channel space, offering a hybrid distribution model placed synergistically

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Ankit Parashar
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Hari Krishna Prabhu, Director at TechnoBind Solutions

TechnoBind Solutions is the first Specialist Distributor in the Indian IT channel space, offering a hybrid distribution model placed synergistically between broad-based and niche distribution, to deliver high business value for its reseller partners. TechnoBind Solutions helps partners to implement solutions, which solve specific business pain points arising out of the rapidly changing facets of technology for businesses.

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In a candid interaction with DQ Channels, Harikrishna Prabhu, Director TechnoBind Solutions Pvt Ltd has talked about Channel Strategies, partner programs and future plans for the next 12 months.

 Can you let us know the recent developments in TecTechnoBind Solutions? (In terms of revenue product portfolio and expansions)

As an organization, we have kept up our pace in terms of the revenue and have grown Y-O-Y substantially. As a Technology Distributor, we have met the expected revenue for most of the OEMs.

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Last year we added Microfocus and Quest to our product portfolio.  These relationships augment our offerings in the area Data Protection, Endpoint Management, and Security.

We believe that with this relationship we will be able to consolidate our presence in the enterprise vertical and would be able to reach larger enterprise VARs and SIs.

In this new financial year – we have signed up with ESET a leading Endpoint Security Solution Provider and Supermicro to address the servers and workstations market.  Supermicro is a key addition as this will help us play in the Software Defined XXX space which is bound to take off in the Indian market.

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This year – apart from consolidating our focus on Enterprise and Midmarket vertical through our partners we will be focusing on Government Sector Central and State Governments, PSUs and Defense.

We will be increasing our presence in T2 and T3 cities as well as SAARC countries.

What is your channel strategy for India this FY?

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As a Technology Distributor, TechnoBind Solutions always believe in building a strong channel ecosystem for all our OEMs. We have a clear Depth and Breadth Strategy to drive the aspired growth for the year. We will be working on strengthening our channel ecosystem in the Tier- 1 and Tier – 2 markets. Recently, we have added multiple product lines to explore newer opportunities in tapped and untapped regions.  The plan is to reach over 20 cities in the current FY, apart from the major cities where we already hold a strong position.

Additionally, we will concentrate on associating with partners to focus on Solutions which will help their customers adopt Cloud Services. Initially, we will be focusing on Data Backup as service, DRaS. Data Migration which is the need of the hour apart from focusing on providing the security to solutions to protect the data residing on the cloud.

What do you look for in a channel partner?

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Channel partners have a major role in expanding our presence and fueling the growth of our OEMs.

We expect a channel partner to have the capability of exploring various opportunities in the new age and disruptive technology segments and introduce the same to their existing customer base. Even the new age customers are looking to adopt latest and emerging technologies to better manage their infrastructure and bring down the expenses. Its time for all of us to evolve ourselves in terms of adopting new technologies and try to address the customer need for better TCO, ROI, and Ease of Management of his IT environment. The expectation of all the OEMs today is partners adapt themselves to the requirements of the new generation customers and build a skill set to cope up with the emerging technologies.

Can you tell us about the partner programs designed for your partners?

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TechnoBind Solutions as a distributor believe in helping our partners build their skill set in terms of Sales and Presales as well as the profitability. To achieve this we work with our Technology Partners (OEMs):

  • By complementing the efforts by introducing their Channel Programs to the channel community. We work with the channel community to build a plan as per the program and execute the same seamlessly it could be in terms of achieving necessary certifications, driving lead generation programs and even creating higher visibility.
  • We also design Channel Programs for of our Technology Partners who do not have the channel programs specific to Indian Market.

As I said earlier we work with partners in building the technical skill set. To aid this activity we conduct many enablement programs which help them attain the required skills and also help get certified. We have also built large presales / technical pools to share knowledge and help each other in the community. We have introduced a community called “ Techno Connect” which is one of the largest Technical Information pool in the channel community.

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We are also running a fortnightly Tech Quiz campaign where partners are challenged on their tech knowledge with our quiz questions – the feedback on this from the field has been fantastic as this helping them be better enabled.  Over 250 partner personnel participate in these quizzes on an average every fortnight.

What are your target verticals?

As mentioned earlier we have products and solutions that can address all verticals and segments. Hence we take the USE Case approach to address the entire market. All these years we were very focused on the Enterprise Markets like Pharma, Retail, Manufacturing, BFSI, etc with the addition of new products we have increased our focus on Government and SMB vertical as well.

How many vendors do you have as of now?

TechnoBind Solutions have 15 vendors in our portfolio belonging to four broad segments, i.e., data storage, data protection, data management and data security.

Under Data Storage– Tintri, Infinidat, Infortrend and Super Micro

Under Data Protection–  Commvault, Druva, Overland Storage -TandBerg Data

Under Data Management– Carbonite, Tableau, Quest and Micro Focus

Under Data Security–  Gematlo – Thales, Seclore, ESET and Check Point

What are your future plans?

TechnoBind has a strategic plan to look forward to both linear and non-linear growth this FY. We strive to be the most preferred VAD for our existing clients and increase our market share.

We will be adding more products to offer new age/disruptive solutions. We are also focusing on training the partner pre-sales team with our ‘TechnoBind Community’ initiative. It will provide a platform to discuss use cases, share insights, experience and think tanks that can help in product pitching If partners have queries, it will be addressed by TechnoBind team or pre-sales team of other partner community. The community consists of 80 – 85 engineers and we are looking to increase the count in the next few months.

This initiative has been appreciated by our partners and customers.

In the near future, we are planning to work with partners in conducting their customer events in partnership with our channel partners on a regular basis.

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