Interaction with Alok Gupta, Managing Director - Unistal Systems Pvt Ltd 

In an exclusive interview with Alok Gupta, Managing Director - Unistal Systems Pvt Ltd. He spoke about the company’s performance, expectations, and challenges for the coming year.

How was the last year for your business from a channel partner perspective?

So I'll tell you that I am one of the organizations which have become an OEM partner, which means that earlier we were a partner when we used to distribute certain security products. 

But for almost the last 12 years, we have got our own IPS, we have created our own products and we are selling only our own products as an OEM. As a PCAIT member, and prefigures president also, we had a great year, we grew almost 27 - 28%.

What are the different expectations a partner has from a CIO?

The first thing that if you ask me,

•  I would like every CIO to ensure when he is procuring something for his organization it should always be through the partner these days, what is happening thought is that we have seen that many CIOs because OEM request that we would like to bill you directly, they have started taking direct billing from the OEMs bypassing the partners.
•  Partners can give them a great edge towards the services because the OEM person is there, tomorrow he will change his job, but the partner will remain as a partner in the industry. So, we expect that CIOs should ensure that they should always have a partner for whom they are buying anything whatever they want to buy for their organization.
• The major challenges that I have noticed as a president are when a partner comes to us if there is a short supply from the OEM, complete payment is blocked. So at that stage we request the CIO should release some payment, not 100%, but some payment. They should not block 100% payment of the partner because ultimately partner has to make the payment within 30 days, whatever the payment cycle is.

How can a partner help CIOs in building the technology?

Partners keep getting OEMs. OEM will come to them every day, every week and new young comes. So the partner goes to the CIOs with multiple OEMs. So they help in bringing the OEMs with

• the latest technology
•  organize the presentation
•  demonstrations of new technology 

So access to the OEM via partner is easier than direct. Because CIOs are anyway, not accessible to all the OEMs quickly.

What are the challenges you face as a channel partner?

Being a channel Association President. The major challenge these days is margins for the partner. Business margins are becoming very low as most of the sales are driven by OEMs. So it is becoming extremely difficult for the partners to survive with the 1% or  2% margin.

What is the potential for the year 2023-24 for the business as a channel partner?

The service industry is growing, software as a service, and SaaS model businesses are growing. So, our partner needs to focus on Diversified Technologies, the latest technologies, because the traditional box moving will not help for good growth in the business. They have to always update themselves with the latest technologies and latest products.

Written by Punam Singh