Indian IT distribution business is driven by few national distributors, who help market growing healthy despite all sort of challenges faced by them. Rashi Peripherals, India’s Best National Distributor has lead the IT revolution in India since its inception. Leading IT & Mobile brands have put their trust in Rashi Peripherals to penetrate into the vast Indian market since 28 years. The company helps more than 20 brands in reaching to their target customers. In year 2018, they are planning to add new product lines in TFT monitors, peripherals, and consumer branded PCs in the next fiscal. Talking more on their New Year plans with DT, Rajesh Goenka, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Rashi Peripherals, shared his entire game plan for channel partners.
DT: What have been the crucial milestones of your company during the year 2017?
Mr. Rajesh: The financial year 2017 has been a consistent year for Rashi Peripherals in terms of business growth. We continued to maintain more than 20% CAGR growth yoy despite major transition in the taxation regulations. While continuing our growth momentum, we also expanded our product portfolio by adding new brands. We take a lot of pride to say that out of our 20 brands, 18 brands have grown steadily yoy.
This year we were also recognized for our stupendous success. We were honoured with the prestigious Indywood IT Excellence Award 2017 by the Telangana Government. Media publication Digital Terminal conferred us the ‘Best National Distributor Award’ 2017 for the second consecutive year. Mr. Kapal Pansari, Director of Rashi Peripherals won the ‘Most Admired Leader’ award from Herald Global. I was shortlisted among the Top 20 CMOs in India by VAR India. All these awards and recognitions indeed reflect our growth ambitions in the Distribution space.
DT: What were the major challenges for distribution business in India?
Mr. Rajesh: The major challenges have been the change in the Government policies, primarily the demonetization and implementation of GST. However, the impact of both the major events on the businesses has now very much normalized and the businesses are now back on the track.
Another major challenge we see is that grey and refurbished material in some of the product categories continue to affect the MOP of the market and as a result of this, partners are facing a lot of difficulties in earning margins.
DT: How GST changed your business affair in the year 2017?
Mr. Rajesh: I would say that business has become simpler post GST implantation with uniform taxation regime facilitating a lot of ease in movement of goods across the regions. However, finance is still struggling to cope-up with the debit and credit of the GST value, but I believe that the overall business has been an upswing in terms of demand.
We have observed an uptake in the demand for desktops from SMBs and Corporates post GST implementation, which has resulted in shoot up in demand for branded Desktops and DIY PCs along with Components. Overall we are pretty optimistic about the uptake in the IT business. The ease of doing business will trigger further demand and upscale in the Components and Peripherals business in particular.
DT: What's your channel strength currently in India? How do you plan to boost channel strength in the year 2018?
Mr. Rajesh: Rashi Peripherals has a robust ecosystem of over 9000 channel partners in about 750 towns in India. We were the first distributor to implement SAP eleven years back, which is today proved to be a robust backbone for our channel strength and channel development. Our partners are core strength and we believe in growing together. We keeps on running channel training program throughout the year to educate them about latest technology and products coming to Indian market. To motivate them further, we also bring channel schemes and reward program with the support from our brands. We will continue to bring such program in this New Year as well. To boost our channel presence, our first level of plan is to expand our reach to 1000 towns and identify new growth avenues in 2018.
DT: Please share the name of the leading brands who are working with you currently.
Mr. Rajesh: We are working with all leading brands in India currently.We distribute products of brands like ADATA, AMD, APC, Apple, Asus, ECS, Fitbit, Google, HP, Intel, Logitech, Lenovo, Leadtek, Micron, NVIDIA, Plantronics, SanDisk, Toshiba, Western Digital, and many other world-renowned brands.
DT: What will be new vendor agreement we may see in the year 2018? Please share if you have any plans to boost product offerings under your distribution company.
Mr. Rajesh: We believe in growth with every brand and every product line YoY and we maintain 50:50 ratio between an organic and inorganic growth. We are planning to add new product lines in TFT monitors, peripherals, and consumer branded PCs in the next fiscal and we will soon disclose details in the public domain.
DT: Please share your current revenue and market growth rate. What is the target for the year 2018? How do you plan to achieve this target?
Mr. Rajesh: Currently we are growing at CAGR of 20% YoY and we will continue to grow at the same pace in FY 2018. To enable this goal, we will extensively focus on solid marketing, deep Channel engagement and Organic and Inorganic growth to sustain our market growth rate. We have a very aggressive plans for the New Year. With high demands and positive market sentiments, we will continue to grow our business along with our channel partners.
