CT:Can you tell us about Neoteric Group as a distributor and service provider?
Nair: Established by Paras Shah in 1997, neoteric infomatique ltd. is one of India’s leading Value-added National Distributors in the IT space. neoteric offers an outstanding portfolio of products and well-structured core technology solutions of exacting international standards, across diverse verticals. Since inception, neoteric has been a market leader in bringing the latest products and technology solutions to the Indian market and finding new ways to add value to customers.
neoteric’s in-depth understanding of the channel business and close association with leading vendors has enabled it to be the vital link in the technology value-chain connecting solution providers with vendors world-wide. Today, neoteric stands tall with around 400 employees generating business opportunities for 10,000 channel partners across 500 cities in India. It caters to AV, components, consumer and memory, creative, enterprise, PC group of products and solutions.
Over the years, neoteric expanded its company operations to countries like Singapore, Dubai, China, Hong Kong, Australia and UK. It has been recognized as the ‘Best Distributor’ by many vendors including Apple, Lenovo, Alcatel-Lucent, Logitech, Hitachi, BenQ, Gigabyte, NEC and Wacom. neoteric has also been nominated to the Alcatel- Lucent Value-Added Distribution Council, which is a closed loop of the top 15 partners of the world who promote technology sharing and best practices across the globe.
The value-added services of neoteric complement its go-to-market strategy with which it enables vendors and channel partners to work towards better business understanding and growth. Guided by a vision to be known as ‘the most preferred distributor’ by both Vendors and Partners, neoteric continues to add value to the supply chain through efficient logistics, in-depth product knowledge, and strategic and innovative value-added initiatives.
Marketing services, implementation services, proof of concepts, training and certifications are some of the value adds that neoteric offers to its vendors and channel community. neoteric’s deep understanding of market needs, technology & product positioning drive it towards value-added selling. Its value-added approach is reflected in the go-to-market (GTM) strategies that it adopts. These include ensuring uniform service levels across the country irrespective of geographics. neoteric works with partners to explore the possibility of offering managed services infrastructure especially on the hosted platforms in areas of Storage, UC and Security. With roadshows, POC display, partner seminars & meets etc., it aims at ensuring end-consumer awareness as a support to the partners and delivering enhanced value in the market. Partner enablement being at its core, neoteric’s strategy for growth lies in training the channel to interface with the customers and provide a complete solution, certify their team on the technical offerings, i.e., pass on qualified leads to the partners and thereby bring about a shift from box-selling to solutions selling and service offerings.
Apart from value-added IT distribution, neoteric offers a host of other services through its Associate Companies – F1 and One Leap which encompass post –sales service support, IT Solutions for end-customers, techno-commercial training to partners, software and mobile app-development etc.
Right from its inception, neoteric’s vision was always to match global excellence and induce global practices. This explains its investment into support functions like HR, Marketing and post-sales services. Driven by an objective of enabling channel partners to pitch complete solution offerings and act as a one-stop shop for all technology requirements, neoteric made a humble foray into the enterprise business in 2008, under the name – neoteric technology solutions (NTS).
This team offers end-to-end IT Solutions and skills- based technical training to end-customers. It gears up partners to serve the customer end-to-end and in turn, add value to them, thus completing the value cycle till the last tier. Right from consulting and solution architecting, the partners are trained and developed to manage the entire gamut of services ranging from sizing, designing, implementation/installation, training and certification along with hosted services and remote maintenance.
The team includes pre-sales, business development as well as post-sales technical experts who train channel partners to incubate from a mere box-selling trader to a solutions provider. The team’s offerings broadly include Audio Video solutions, IP telephony solutions, Networking solutions, Digital Signage solutions, Security & Surveillance solutions and Media & Entertainment solutions. It has been signing up various brands that cater to sectors like Education, Hospitality, Retail, Healthcare and Manufacturing.
neoteric has a dedicated Integrated Marketing & Communications (MARCOM) Solutions’ Team that supports its vendors on Marketing, PR and demand generation activities like road shows for partners and end-consumers, customized channel partner programs, marketing collaterals, channel-advertisements, digital media-engagement solutions, and special incentive-based schemes etc. which aim at generating product-awareness amongst the target audience. With their extensive research and creative knack, the team creates innovative activities and ideas for partners and customers.
Post-sales services is an integral part of neoteric’s value-added services. neoteric has been providing a comprehensive array of post-sales and warranty services to its vendors and channel partners for over a decade under its service arm ‘F1’and over the years, it garnered the requisite skill sets and competencies to propel its service offering to a higher level.
Subsequently, in 2012, neoteric announced the formation of F1 Info Solutions and Services Private Limited as an independent, 3rd Party neutral service provider – aligned with a vision to be “the customer‘s most trusted choice for service through continuous improvement, ethical practices and commitment towards achieving the highest levels of customer satisfaction”. F1 offers a wide gamut of IT support services as an independent 3rd Party neutral service provider, besides catering to neoteric’s customers.
With a dedicated team of over 300 qualified engineers and technicians, F1’s current reach in India is spread across 117 service locations through its 40 plus Branches and 82 Partner Service centers (ASPs), coupled with 500 Field Service Locations. It is ideally positioned and equipped to provide best-in-class service. It currently offers a wide gamut of IT support services, besides catering to neoteric’s customers.
This includes Onsite services, Walk-in Services, Spares Management, Security & Surveillance, RMA/Reverse logistics, Extended Warranty and Installation-support Services.
‘Evolve’, which was launched by neoteric as a value added program to impart techno-commercial training for IT products transcended into a full-fledged, independent Software & Training Services Company by the name of OneLeap Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in 2013.
Thus, neoteric made a foray into the Software & App. Development space and also headway with software trainings under ‘Evolve’. As part of solutions’ offerings, OneLeap provides training on Microsoft, Oracle, Big Data, Hadoop and Mac IT, mobile & web-based applications’ development and business solutions for vendors, channel-partners, corporates and end-consumers. OneLeap specializes in solving business challenges through diverse software services, by enabling process automation, technology adoption, and extending support services, on retainer or turnkey basis.
CT: Being a national distributor, how have you expanded your distribution strengths in last one year?
Nair: Last year, we consolidated existing businesses, improved hygiene parameters, channel expansion and marketing activities and grew our product portfolio in the AV, Enterprise and converged-solutions vertical. We made headway in building a strong Security surveillance vertical, Data Centre solution vertical and developed a strong consumer accessories portfolio with deeper retail penetration and creation of consumer vertical.
We succeeded in strongly implementing GTM, operational efficiency, IT investments, strong biz hygiene focus and reviews all across at every level of every dept. Also, we strengthened our focus on the corporate, SMB & the SME segments. We built out competencies in the services business to enable the partner to pitch in the focus segments and support them on the complete gamut of activities right from consultation to after- sales services.
As an organization, neoteric is known to always suitably adapt to the changing business environment so as to grab opportunities and enhance growth. In keeping with this, we announced a new organization design which was part of a larger consolidation of the Go-To markets (GTM) that we had conceptualized about 3 years back; we were waiting for the opportune moment to roll it out. Thus, we now have two larger BUs in neoteric- Consumer and Commercial with a view of converging GTM and leveraging on the combined strengths of the field and business teams.
This overall consolidation will bring increased focus and synergies into our execution plans, help us collectively march towards our goals in a smarter and faster way, drive better organizational discipline and be future-ready. The new commercial BU team will be able to cross sell and upsell products to the same partners who possibly were just buying one or two categories from us. This will also help in improving our gross margins.
As yet another significant move, we made a recent foray into mainstream Acer business. We geared up on our Accessories / Apple Resellers’ connect. Also, we firmed up our revenue and margins thus enhancing our distribution strength. We beefed up our Retail-Connect biz during the last year and saw our active participation on the retail front.
In the last fiscal year, we laid the foundation for channelizing and fortifying our existing channels of growth and made a foray into new, flourishing services, products and verticals. Also, we got our strategy in place and continued developing our focused verticals. We struck major deals through new vendor sign-ups and customer acquisitions, and expanded our overseas-reach by penetrating into Australia and Dubai.
On the commercial side, we signed up Xerox for both stock-and-sell and B2B. We associated with Emerson for both online and line-interactive range of products, thus further enhancing our power portfolio on the commercial side. On the consumer side, we kicked off Bowers & Wilkins (B & W) mainly targeted at the Apple stores, further building our accessories portfolio. We also grew our LG mobility-relationship and started scaling up in the territories we manage. On the components side, we further developed our approach and portfolio. We added LG monitors and the Corsair line of memory products to our portfolio.
In the last fiscal year, the Solutions team actively took the market-approach and successfully showcased diverse solution- offerings at reputed industry events like Interop, Broadcast, Infocom and Secutech to enrich the organisation’s Solutions portfolio, generate awareness about advanced products and solutions currently available to Indian consumers, help partners and customers explore and understand how new transformative technologies can be put to practice and integrated, to avail maximum benefits.
The last year also witnessed our foray into the Software and App. Development space as we welcomed the ‘One Leap’ Team aboard; alongside we made headway with our software trainings under ‘Evolve’.
CT: In terms of vendors relationship, which all major brands do you distribute?
Nair: Some of neoteric’s current top vendors are Acer, ACTi, AJA, Alcatel-Lucent, AMX, Belkin, BenQ, Bosch, Bowers & Wilkins( B & W), Corsair, Cybernetyx, Canon, Dell, Emerson, Gigabyte, Giesecke & Devrient ( G&D ), G-Tech, Hitachi, Incase, Kramer, LaCie, Lenovo, Leviton, LG, Lite-On, Logitech, Matrox, NEC, Numeric, Panasonic, Promise, UMAX, Wacom, Western Digital and Xerox.
CT: Hardware distribution is bound to shrink as the industry consolidates and customers move to a services-led opex model. What is Neoteric doing to remodel its business?
Nair: neoteric has launched its cloud computing services initiative with an objective to provide its channel partner community Software-as-a-service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, business continuity and data migration solutions.
neoteric has a comprehensive suite of offerings under its Partner Enablement Program to help solution providers better understand and market cloud-based solutions. The services include cloud foundation webinars, sales and marketing support, and technical services. As part of the technical services, support services viz. Knowledge Base, Virtual Classroom Trainings, and Technical Support will be provided through the cloud partner portal.
CT: What are the major paradigm shift do you see in distribution in next 2-3 years, and how is Neoteric gearing up for these transformation?
Nair: As the vendors’ downstream alliance partners, distributors reach out to VARs that vendors cannot reach directly because they can’t afford to. IT distribution strategy is to strengthen the channel partners’ role as an influencer with their customers by strengthening the partner’s expertise around cloud and business solutions, targeted at business verticals of their influence.
In their efforts to provide more core value to their partners, IT distributors are adding new enablement capabilities like digital marketing, setting up practices around a particular vendor’s technology, and positioning and upselling technical knowledge and expertise.
Apart from value-added IT distribution, neoteric offers a host of other services through its Associate Companies – F1 and One Leap which encompass post –sales service support, IT Solutions for end-customers, techno-commercial training to partners, software and mobile app-development etc.
CT: What was your revenue performance for this year and what are you gunning at for next year?
Nair: We are looking at profitable and solutions-oriented growth.
CT: Neoteric has been exploring options of on-boarding a strategic investor for Neoteric IT distribution, has there been any success?
Nair: This has been more of an on-going quest and we have not zeroed in on anything concrete yet.
CT: What will be the role of a distributor be in the cloud computing era?
Nair: In the cloud-computing era, a Distributor’s role is to provide a comprehensive array of offerings as part of its Partner Enablement Program to help solution providers better understand and market cloud-based solutions. It has to offer the channel partner community Software-as-a-service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, business continuity and data migration solutions. The services include cloud foundation webinars, sales and marketing support, and technical services. As part of the technical services, support services viz. Knowledge Base, Virtual Classroom Trainings, and Technical Support could be provided through the cloud partner portal.
As the vendors’ downstream alliance partners, distributors reach out to VARs that vendors cannot reach directly because they can’t afford to. IT distribution strategy is to strengthen the channel partners’ role as an influencer with their customers by strengthening the partner’s expertise around cloud and business solutions, targeted at business verticals of their influence. In their efforts to provide more core value to their partners, IT distributors will need to build and focus on new enablement capabilities like digital marketing, setting up practices around a particular vendor’s technology, and positioning and upselling technical knowledge and expertise.