The IT Park Of India

Coimbatore has been the top destination for any player in the IT industry,
whether in hardware or software, when looking for an alternative to Chennai.
Nicknamed the Manchester of South India, Coimbatore is known for the
manufacturing of motor pumps and varied engineering goods. The city is slowly
becoming the IT hub of Tamil Nadu after Chennai due to various favorable
policies of the state government and the announcement by Elcot (Electronic
Corporation of Tamil Nadu) for setting up of an IT park/special economic zone (SEZ)
of about 56 acres at Vilankurichi Village, Coimbatore North. The proposed
built-up area of 4mn sq ft is evidence to the fact that the IT boom is spilling
over tier-2 cities, and Coimbatore holds the top spot in this makeover. Tamil
Nadu Government is developing IT through its 'hub and spoke' model by keeping
Chennai as its nerve, and spreading IT across the state so that Chennai doesn't
get choked.

Besides government's initiatives in setting up IT parks, there have been five
privately promoted IT parks and three SEZs, which clearly makes Coimbatore one
of the emerging upcountry cities in the country.

The SME segment is the backbone of Coimbatore, which is contributing to
almost 40 percent on an overall scale. Education and end-customer remains
another strong vertical, which is equally contributing to the IT market as SME.
Going by government statistics, there are 27 engineering colleges, 72 arts and
science institutions, and 18 polytechnics in the city, which, besides making the
student community a huge potential for business, also provides a source for the
recruitment of fresh talent.

According to distributors present in Coimbatore, the overall size of the
market per month is nearly Rs 20 to 30 crore and the city has been witnessing a
constant growth of 20 percent YoY for the past two years. “The market has been
growing constantly about 20-25 percent for the past two years and the end-user
segment has been contributing towards a great extent to this growth,” claimed S
Karthikeyan, CEO, Bloom Electronics Coimbatore.

Coimbatore

FACT FILE Favorable state govt policies Elcot to setup SEZ in the city Large number of education institutes, which give access to fresh talent

However, R Mahesh of Ozone Computers attributes this growth to the SME
manufacturing units in Coimbatore and the textile industry in Tirupur.
“Industries have played a vital role in the growth of Coimbatore market. We sell
an average of nearly 5,500 PCs per month from the Coimbatore IT market. Though
Tirupur has been made a separate division, it continues to contribute to the
Coimbatore to a great extent,” said Mahesh.

Besides Tirupur, even dealers from other cities like Salem, Erode, Nilgiris,
Mettupalayam, Pazhani, Udumalpet, Pollachi source IT products from Coimbatore
market due to the proximity.

Presario notebooks, Seagate hard disks, Intel CPUs and HP printers are the
fast moving products in Coimbatore. “Laptops and desktops have grown at a rate
of 110 percent last year and both the products definitely have market even in
the future as still there are more places in and around Coimbatore to tap,”
claimed Karthikeyan.

On the solutions side, wireless solutions have seen a rise among the
corporate sector and wired networking solutions have seen a good uptake among
the SME segment. According to G Sunderam, Director, Bloom Electronics, power
solutions and total networking solutions are witnessing a great demand in
Coimbatore. “There are enough opportunities for power solutions and total
networking solutions, however there is hardly any expertise in providing these
solutions, which the vendors must try to provide,” Sunderam claimed. He added
that vendors should educate partners and make them experts in providing these
solutions rather than selling it. “Even at this time of global cash crunch, most
industries in Coimbatore have enough money to spend on security and surveillance
solutions, but there aren't enough solution providers who are experts in
providing end-to-end solutions due to the lack of education from vendors,” he
added.

On the other hand, G Suresh, eCAPS Computers India felt that storage and
security solutions are seeing a huge uptake among customers in Coimbatore.
“Vendors must focus more on storage and security solutions in this market, as
there is huge prospect for these solutions here. Besides that we also need
installation support and post-sales support from vendors,” he averred.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is another area, which has a huge market
in Coimbatore. However the segment is yet to be conquered by both the vendors
and channels. “Primarily the dealers have to move away from box pushing and
start providing ERP, cost cutting solutions, inventory management solutions,
design solutions and other enterprise related solutions, as they have huge
manufacturing industries in Coimbatore,” said Manoj Shankar, Branch Manager-Coimbatore,
Ingram Micro. He also said that there are ample opportunities for point-of-sales
products, thermal printers and barcode solutions due to the presence of
manufacturing units in the city.

“There are huge warehouses in Coimbatore and the logistics management is a
difficult task for them. However there hasn't been any single effective
logistics management solution in the market. The partners need to identify such
areas and start offering solutions accordingly,” Shankar said.

NR Sethuraman

sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in