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Pan-India Association for IT Channel

During the last few months, as we traveled across the country organizing roadshows for various channel partners, the most common complaints heard are delayed payments, vendors undercutting prices, software double taxation and increasing commoditization of hardware

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Ishleen Kaur
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During the last few months, as we traveled across the country organizing roadshows for various channel partners, the most common complaints heard are delayed payments, vendors undercutting prices, software double taxation and increasing commoditization of hardware. Delays by the vendor despite several reminders, resellers extending credit periods beyond all reasonable limits or worse disappearing in cases without paying—it's obvious that payments (or rather non-payment, to be more precise) is one of the most serious malaise afflicting the channel community today.

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While chroniclers of the times like The DQ Week has been actively highlighting the plights of those suffering individuals or companies whenever or wherever possible, I just cannot help feeling that ultimately it is the local channel association, which can offer the most meaningful assistance. Provided, of course the association is active enough, not beset with internal rivalries and petty politics and most importantly carries enough clout in the market.

However, in reality we are not seeing much of this happening, as most associations often fail to take up the cudgel on behalf of their beleaguered members. The reasons are not difficult to fathom; either there are vested interests in play; or the association office bearers are too busy with their own businesses to devote enough time; and, in some cases, they are plainly indifferent to the plights of the individual partners.

Often the large or influential partners in a particular market use their own clout to solve their problems, and it is the smaller partners who suffer. And probably these are the people in maximum need of assistance from the associations—but unfortunately these most often turn out to be another of those 'Big Boys Clubs'.

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Many agree that one solution out of this rigmarole could be having either local regional associations and subsequently a national association, maybe something on the lines of Nasscom. While the second option still looks like a distant mirage, 2012 at least has seen traction as far as regional associations are concerned.

There are already successful examples of regional associations like CONFED-IT in Tamil Nadu (conglomerate of 24 associations across the state operational from 2006) and FITAG in Gujarat (another consortium of 24 associations across the state).

Fourteen associations across Maharashtra planned to come together to form a regional association tentatively named the Federation of IT Associations of Maharashtra. And now there are talks that CONFED-IT along with associations from Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kerala plan to form the South Indian Information Technology association.

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The obvious aims of all these new groups are to provide a more collective and stronger voice especially for lobbying. Like the Maharashtra associations feel that the channel required a unified force to represent its concerns to the government and the vendors.

Macro issues such as after-sales support, e-waste, octroi, local body tax (LBT), VAT, clarity on GST are evident in the channel community in Maharashtra. Each association is voicing similar concerns, and some of them have given-up the fight since the vendors or the government (as may be the case) refused to listen to them. Plans are also afoot to make all defaulter dealers a part of the single public interest litigation (PIL).

What the channel community needs today is a more structured lobbying organization—perhaps a national consortium or more appropriately a mother of all associations. Hardware industry has MAIT, software exports has Nasscom, maybe something on similar lines for channel partners could alleviate many of the woes besetting the smaller partners today.

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Such a national association will have several mandates—lobbying with government on various legislation affecting market/trade, dealing with individual payment issues across the community and within vendors and for other general issues with the principals and OEMs. The important thing is to have a proper uniform mechanism in place across the country. While that still looks a little far off, at least the formation of these regional associations herald a good start.

One precaution though—to make these experiments successful, each constituent association should have the same voice and should not feel overwhelmed especially by a particularly bigger association within the group. While CIITA has been doing some exemplary work in the East especially its handling of the sensitive Rashi-Savera issue, there have been concerns in certain quarters that it serves primarily COMPASS interests.

Tomorrow the Maharashtra association can also feel overwhelmed by TAIT or CMDA-Pune. CONFED-IT, functional since 2006, however shows the way in this respect. If all these experiments succeed, we may go for a national association in 2013. The DQ Week is willing to take up the initiative.

Rajneesh De

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