An idea being killed before it took shape is not stopping one old hand in the channel from pushing into new domains. Another is as much hard at work in his office set on a street which immobile trucks have blocked out for other traffic. Both are fighting odds stacked against them of immense size.
Amit Rambhia says the online B2B exchange which he had launched in 1998-99, ITChain.com, complete with reverse auctions didn t take off due to lack of funds, not lack of participation from peers. That one failure, says the IIM graduate, has forced him to chart his destiny in areas other than technological innovations. So he sticks to what he knows best assembly. At the most he would increase his capacity and start ‘manufacturing’ products that are niche compared to the commodity that is the PC assembly business. He had started the initiative at a time similar to when Tech Pacific launched its online order management system. The distributor might have done marginally better but we haven’t heard much about it since.
Harish Lalwani, who offers Rs 4 lakh-worth ink refilling systems, an option to manual refilling is afraid that any money he puts into his promotions will be dulled by what brands like HP, Lexmark or Canon is capable of. But he says that the MNCs too stand to gain if they don’t kill his business proposition there would lesser buyers of counterfeits.
There have been others who had wonderful ideas working for them for years, but which few outside the community and customers know. One of them has been Tarun Seth of Delhi’s Micro Clinic. He has had Maruti Omni vans door-delivering services to his customers, mainly banks, the public sector and corporate, for over a decade. His was a ‘mobile computer maintenance company’ when it started in 1991. HDD major Seagate launched a similar service with vans saying “Seacare comes to you” only in January 2005. With all the funds it has to promote this and other initiatives, like the SMS customer care, it may soon also walk off with the ‘innovator of the year’ award.
Vendor efforts to aid their partners in these areas have fallen short. For instance, partners of Intel, which even has a solutions division, charge that through its annual channel conferences and other means, it promotes technologies here that go with its worldwide strategy no thought for what the local market scenario is. This was an obvious reference to Wimax when even its older cousin wi-fi has yet to sprout in critical mass.
There are surely many many more instances like the ones mentioned above.
It’s a call they can make – small firms with big dreams aligning with bigger and powerful allies in the channel itself.