Lenovo laptops being sold with Sahara stickers!

NEW DELHI

JULY 6, 2006

In what is seen by many as a one of most bizarre goof ups when it comes to
executing manufacturing and maintaining healthy supply chain activities, some
Lenovo laptops in the Indian region are being sold openly in the market with
Sahara stickers on them.

Some of the laptop series L1 (approximately 50,000 pieces according to the
market sources) - from Sahara Computers, which is available with 40 GB hard
disk, Celeron 1.4, wireless speakers and 14 inch screen, looks to be a normal
laptop from Sahara, only to an untrained eye. When looked closely the laptop has
a Sahara sticker and behind Sahara sticker it is a Lenovo product. 

While Sahara has placed its laptop range at around Rs 27,000 mark, Lenovo
laptops are being sold in the market at around Rs 38,000. When DQ Week brought
this issue to the front, different Lenovo resellers from cities like Allahabad,
Lucknow and even Chandigarh are coming forward to express their concern on this.

"This will create a very bad situation for us. After all customers will
go for a cheaper product and if they can get the same Lenovo product at a
cheaper rate from Sahara than surely we are going to have a bad time selling a
Lenovo product," explained a Lenovo reseller from Allahabad on conditions
of anonymity.

However, when contacted Naresh Khosla, Vice President, Sahara Computers said
that the company is in the process of investigating this case internally and
also checking with the technology partner to understand the reason for this goof
up.

"We were not aware of any such issue before it was raised by DQ Week. We
are investigating the same internally and checking with the technology partner
to understand the reason. There are only a very small percentage of such
products in the market as far as we are concerned. I don't think there is any
major percentage of the affected notebooks in the market, so the reseller
community do not need to panic in any way," he added.

How this could happen?

If we closely look at the global scenario, there are five big (Original
design manufacturers) including Taiwan based BenQ or Asus, busy meeting the
needs of multinational companies like Sahara or Lenovo. It is only the pressure
of supplying big volumes to MNCs that can sometime translate towards such goof
ups on an ODM part.

"In case of a laptop, these ODMs supply everything except for four
components - HDD, Microprocessor, memory and the wireless card. In the case of
Sahara, the ODM even supplies the stickers, so it becomes easier for companies
like us to manage everything.

We have a tech. partnership with the best ODM who also supplies to other Top
Global MNC's and the same confirms the quality and features of our products.
Since our business grew very fast and we were able to sell more numbers than
forecasted. We put immense pressure on the ODM to ship larger volumes and it is
possible that they have shipped the excess quantities of any other MNC Vendor to
fulfill our fast growing demand. The huge response from each category to the
discussed laptop has really made it the perfect solution to the Indian Mobile
computing needs," Naresh added.

When the going is already quite tough for the resellers in terms of
generating profits, the reseller community is in a quandary over an important
issue like this. "Whether it is Sahara or Lenovo, both these companies are
quite reputed. It is a Sahara Laptop that is costing around Rs 27,000 while
Lenovo products are quite costly at around Rs 38,000. Now if a customer is
looking at both the products, which one should he go for? It will be a big issue
of concern for Lenovo resellers like us," informed, a reseller from
Varanasi on conditions of anonymity.