The Indian IT distribution market is growing at rapid pace as the growing adoption of technology products/solutions making this market more opportunistic. There are immense growth opportunities for the distributors who are looking forward to boost their performance and building up the best portfolio. Beetel Teletech is one of the leading IT distributors in India who provides reliable and effective products. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal held an exclusive chat with Mr. Sanjeev Chhabra, MD & CEO, Beetel Teletech Limited. Mr. Sanjeev shared important insights about the distribution market, their growth, targets and a lot more. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How do you look at the growth of Beetel? How are you positioned currently in the Indian distribution market?
Sanjeev: Beetel has been an ever-evolving organisation and keeping in line with the new trends and technologies has been increasing its footprint and driving growth. Our endeavour is to drive growth for our partner brands and channel partners. With our current set of partners like Poly, Avaya, Samsung, Accops, etc. we have been facilitating the increase of their market share and our share in their business as well. We have been introducing new product categories to drive width and at the same time increasing our reach to drive depth resulting in growth for us and our partner brands & channel partners alike.
Our strategy till last year was to drive a Safe, Stable & Secure business, given the uncertain times we just came out from. However, we registered very positive growth with our existing partners and are striving to expand the business by adding new partnerships. Beetel has a 3-decade-old legacy, and we aim to become the most preferred Value-Added Distributor in the country. In addition to this Beetel has three business units: Consumer, Network, and Enterprise. One of our biggest strengths is our channel network and its presence across India. We have more than 1500 channel partners, present in 400+cities in India, and are growing our footprint in the international markets, with 19 cities already being serviced by us. Beetel has been an ever-evolving organization and is always keeping up with the latest tech trends/solutions, focusing on providing the latest solutions to the customers in the industry.
Rajeev: What is your GTM strategy to speed up your business growth in the coming months? What is your roadmap to further cement your positioning in the market by 2023?
Sanjeev: We have a four-fold GTM Strategy:
Deep Dive into Partnerships
• Beetel is a value-added distributor, basically an indirect company. On the one side, we have vendor partners, and on the other side, we have channel partners that serve our end customers and clients.
• Beetel is focused on helping the vendor partners gain more market share in the country and plans to grow the business with a mutual growth plan for the vendor partners.
• We keep exploring the introduction/addition of new products/solutions in our existing partnerships to address the market's needs and drive mutual growth.
Increase the role of Beetel in the Value Chain
• Beetel strives to provide a more consultative role to our channel partners, along with our other services, helping them understand the market better and come up with efficient solutions.
• Beetel as a company is focused on providing end-to-end solutions to our partners, be it Pre-Sales and Proof of Concepts to actual conversions and implementation, and follow it up with After Sales Support.
Partner Enablement
• Beetel's key focus area is to drive partner enablement. We always keep on upskilling them to help them win orders.
• In the last year, Beetel has conducted more than 500 pieces of training and webinars along with 450+ certifications and 20 offline events.
• The key here is to equip our partners with a better understanding of the solutions for them to be able to pitch them to the end clients and customers and service their needs. We do act as consultants to our partners rather than just a distributor partner for them.
Increase reach
• Beetel is currently servicing customers in more than 400 cities in India and 19+ cities internationally. However, we are continuously increasing our footprint and reach and are focussing on Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities where we see excellent growth potential. This helps our vendor partners to explore and penetrate new markets.
Roadmap
Our objective is to become the most preferred Value-Added Distributor partner in the Indian market and all our actions are targeted towards the same.
• 4S Theme: Beetel is highly agile, always looking for new solutions for customers and addressing market needs with the most efficient solutions. Along with this approach, we are also following a theme of Safe, Stable, and Secure Business for our partners and with a focus on scaling the business and the complete value chain.
• Make in India: Our focus is on Make in India products and solutions, and to that effect, we have already moved towards Indian Brands and Manufacturing:
o JV with Dixon
o New Vendor Relationships like Sparsh, Lavelle, IP Fusion, etc.
• New Software-based solutions: With the markets moving towards more Software and Cloud-Based solutions, as the turnaround time is faster and also due to the shortage in the global chipset market, it’s an organic move towards these solutions. Beetel is seeing excellent growth potential and has already started focussing on Software Solutions in CAD, CAM & PLM domains and Network Security based solutions like SD-WAN. Software as a Service is growing big.
Rajeev: Please brief about your enterprise offerings. Do you have any plans to add more products to your portfolio?
Sanjeev: Beetel strives to be the most preferred Value-Added Distributor in India. The focus is on a solution-selling approach and basis the needs and requirements of our customers, we deploy solutions accordingly rather than a pure device/hardware or software sell. We do not sell directly to end customers but enable our network of channel partners and system integrators to address the requirements. There’s a 360-degree ecosystem that has been developed around the products and services that we offer, which spans from Pre-Sales, and POCs, to deployment and finally managing the after-sales service and maintenance as well. There’s a vast suite of solutions and services that Beetel provides, that can be catered to serve the enterprise needs and address all their requirements.
Rajeev: What are your channel plans to leverage the emerging business opportunities? Please brief about your offline channel strength and plans to boost partner strength across all regions in India.
Sanjeev: Our focus is to build trust amongst the existing channel partners and expand our current partner network. As our channel partners play a very significant role in the go-to-market strategy, we plan to expand vertically and horizontally to meet the needs of our partners and customers. We always seek to grow and increase our offerings, enabling our partners with the latest skillset on the new offerings and helping them address the change in customer requirements constantly because we believe in equal growth opportunities for everyone connected with us.
Beetel’s success lies in the 360O growth of our channel partner ecosystem. We work on an indirect model and provide adequate training to our channel partners. There are more than 1500 partners associated with us. We enable them with solid back-end support and help them in the pre-sales, post-sales, deployment, inventory management, etc. With this kind of backing, they can go and win any big business in the market. Training and certifications are the keys to empowering them with new learnings and experiences. We provide a minimum of 500 pieces of training in the entire quarter to our partners on various products and services
