Kolkata's Reseller Renaissance

From merely pushing boxes a few years back, many of the Kolkata
resellers are transforming themselves into solution providers and adding large
corporates into their client dossiers

How would
you determine the IT health of a city? While PC and Internet penetration as well
as sales figures of enterprise application vendors do act as pertinent
parameters, even these might not be enough to gauge the magnitude of
e-transformation, a city has undergone. The activities of the local reseller
community, especially once they don their solution provider hats, perhaps
reflects a more accurate as well as pragmatic picture of the levels of IT
awareness of a particular market. An ideal example would be Kolkata of 2006-a
market that could only boast of some box pushers in GC Avenue two years back is
today a thriving haven of solution providers, reiterating how the city has upped
its ante in the country's IT barometer.

The number of significant
solution providers from the city have increased manifold in recent times. So it
would be an impossible exercise to profile the activities of all of them
simultaneously. Instead, what Dataquest has attempted to do is take a snapshot
of a few of them across the spectrum, ranging from primarily system integrators
to pure play network integrators to former box pushers who have now donned the
solution provider garb. As such revenue has not been considered as a main
criterion, instead we have looked at the project profiles and nature of
solutions offered. While some of these continued to focus only on the Eastern
market (not only Kolkata but entire West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, the
North-East, even Bangladesh, and Bhutan), many have ventured across the country
by adopting a national portfolio.

Diamond Infotech

The company Manoj Rathi founded in 1998 with an initial principal of Rs 9000
ended 2004-05 with revenues of Rs 11 crore and is expected to touch Rs 14 crore
in 2005-06. Add to this the fact that Diamond was cited by DQ Week magazine as
the “Best System Integrator of Kolkata” for two years running, and it
becomes obvious that Kolkata players have truly arrived on the solution provider
scene. Customized solution has been Diamond's basic development plank all
along: “No two clients are alike and therefore, their needs are different
too,” says Rathi, a principal he has strictly adhered to even at the cost of
sacrificing on margins.

The company has indeed
come a long way since its box-pushing days. Apart from providing a plethora of
networking and connectivity solutions for corporate houses, it also offers a
range of security solutions including anti-virus, firewalls, VPN, and patch
management. While it serves multiple vendors such as Cisco, D-Link, Avaya, 3Com,
Symantec, and McAfee, as a Microsoft Direct Partner, Diamond specializes in SQL,
SBS and Exchange Servers. In recent months, it has started offering Tandberg
storage solutions, power solutions from APC and Belarc structured cable. It was
awarded the Best Retailer from Eastern India by Intel for selling maximum number
of PCs and notebooks based on P-4 and Centrino was another feather in
Diamond's cap.

Rathi feels that
Diamond has carved out a niche amongst the stockbroker community particularly in
Kolkata but also in Mumbai, and Ahmedabad to some extent. Today it services over
600 stock broking firms with complete range of solutions including blue chips
like Anand Rathi Group, LKP and Sharekhan amongst others. Other than
stockbrokers, Diamond also serves major enterprises like Century Plywood and
call centers like Xplotek and Ecall Serve. Though HQ in Kolkata, Rathi's
company today has also spread wings to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Shillong.

Embee
Software

It is the
“Premier Enterprise Business Partner in East” for HP, a premier IBM Partner,
a Gold Certified Partner of Microsoft as well as Intuit Software's “Best
Partner for Innovation” internationally. In terms of pedigree, very few can
beat or even compete with Embee Software, a solution provider that also offers
facilities management and manpower sourcing on SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and Lotus
skill sets across South East Asia. Numbers too match up to the hype: The company
grew by 103% in 2004-05 to post revenues of Rs 59 crore adding more than 150 new
customers and retaining 85% existing business. MD Sudhir Kothari however,
reminds that after growing from Rs 22 crore to Rs 59 crore in three years,
2005-06 will be one of consolidation.

“Though we will not
record more than 10% growth this year, it does not mean that we lagged behind in
adding clients,” says Kothari. In support, he lists a host of significant
projects: Embee signed a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (MEA) with Tata Steel
for three years totaling Rs 16 crore and one with Hexaware for Rs 8 crore. In
fact, Tata Steel was the first major EA contract won by Microsoft in the
manufacturing vertical. It also worked with Tata AIG and WNS for deployment of
Intuit's Track-IT help desk and asset management solution across 5,000
desktops. Other BPOs too have started coming into the Embee's fold for Intuit
solutions-these include mSourcE, Zenta, Techbooks, ABN Amro, Tata Power, Tata
Tea, and Ranbaxy amongst others.

Last but not the least
Embee provided HP Itanium servers and storage worth Rs 3 crore to Geographical
Survey of India for portal development. Facilities management has turned out to
be another lucrative avenue with corporate customers like Hutch, Bharti, ABP,
Exide, Tata Teleservices, Metaljunction, Haldia Petrochemical and UCO Bank
amongst others. Manpower sourcing has been undertaken for Wipro, IBM, and HLL in
India and HP in Singapore. This year has also witnessed Embee taking up
boardroom solutions from Mitsubishi. It has also become the sole distributor for
Epson projectors in Eastern India.

Netwings

While most of the Kolkata solution providers are located in and around GC
Avenue, Netwings is one exception, being housed at Salt Lake, the city's
software hub. One of Kolkata's most prominent network integrators with
revenues nearly touching Rs 10 crore, Netwings had a memorable 2005. In the year
2005 it bagged four large and prestigious networking contracts in the eastern
parts of the country. These include both wireline and wireless networking
projects for Price Waterhouse Cooper, TCS's new facility as well as Wipro
BPO's Towers, all in Kolkata. In addition, Netwings also completed the campus
networking for the Rourkela Steel Plant.

In its Wipro BPO
project 12,000 nodes were connected using Amp and Cisco products. The campus
networking of the Rourkela Steel Plant in Orissa involved connecting 1500 nodes.

Jaideep Chakrabarti,
head of Netwings, claims with justifiable pride that the three projects in the
city represent some of the biggest networking deals ever undertaken in the
eastern part of the country, and were won against bids from SI biggies like
Wipro and Datacraft. “With a 50 people team in place, we are now the biggest
networking SI in this part of the country and plan to expand into Bangladesh,
Bhutan and Nepal.” Incidentally, in Bhutan, Netwings had already completed
projects with Bhutan Telecom and Druk Air, while in Bangladesh it is offering
consulting on security and setting up call center infrastructure.

Going ahead, the
company plans to build the call center infrastructure for Videocon and Godrej.
The two companies are selling real estate infrastructure for the purpose in the
city. The business model involves Netwings sharing revenue with Videocon and
Godrej-earlier Chakrabarti, informs this model was also followed with BITL.

Suntronic
Systems

With a spectacular 55% growth in revenues over the last two years, Suntronic
has not only reached Rs 41 crore in 2004-05, it is also recognized as one of the
premier SIs from the east. And with another 20% growth expected this year, CEO
Pradeep Biyani expects the company to touch Rs 50 crore in 2005-06. Though
primarily a large chunk of the revenue still comes from box pushing, Suntronic
has also made a name for itself with its total solutions particularly for the
government sector as well as SMBs and SOHOs.

With e-governance
initiatives from the West Bengal government on the rise, Suntronic too had
managed to bag a fair share of the pie. Significant government projects won
through WEBEL include those with the Commercial Taxes, IGR and the Land Reforms
departments. Being related to VK Bhandari, MD of Supertron India, and one of the
doyens of the Kolkata reseller community has definitely helped Biyani both in
acquiring necessary expertise as well as brand equity. Even today, though it is
a separate company, Suntronic is still located right next to the Supertron
premises.

Outside of government
projects, Suntronic also handles around eight large local corporates. These
include names such as Mangalam Timbers, CRI, and McLeod amongst others. The
company deals with products from a host of vendors including the likes of
Seagate, D-Link, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Acer, Norton, Oracle, Philips,
Samsung, Asus, Creative, Transcend, Kingston, Adobe, Checkpoint, Post Master,
Trend Micro and TVSE.

However, Intel's
contribution has been the maximum in helping Suntronic to maintain its growth
graph in the last two fiscals. Apart from being rated as a premier partner for
Intel, Suntronic was also chosen as Intel's best Server Partner for Kolkata.
Amongst other accolades, Biyani reminds that Suntronic also received an award
from Philips for achieving highest number of sales figure for 2004-05.

Thanks to Biyani's
credo of “service does matter,” the company is earning kudos as an SI of
note in Kolkata. Moreover, it is gradually expanding to other cities like Ranchi,
Patna, and Jaipur beyond the East. Though it ventured into retail about a year
back, Biyani frankly admits that his showroom is yet to receive the footfalls
expected initially. Even here, he feels, that service could be leveraged as an
advantage to bring the retail business back on track.

Rajneesh De 

rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in