Agartala Market plagued by fake HP cartridges and ESET hard drives

HP accounts to almost 70% market share of Agartala printer market. However, speaking to a few channel partners in the city, there have been strenuous grievances regarding the issue of fake cartridges that are entering the market from past 2 years. As per Saikat Saha, Owner, Sigma Systems, “There was a HP vendor representative in the city almost more than 2 years back. But when he perceived a gradual fall in market demand, he left. HP as a vendor never tried to find the reason behind the falling demand as they were happy with higher margins and better demands from other markets in the North East.”

But the channel partners who deal in HP printers have been plagued due to loss of business and revenue. The fake cartridges are far cheaper and poorer in quality. The users who have bought them are aware that they were cheated but first time buyers are getting fooled every day. The channel partners believe that there are chances that the supply of such fake cartridges is coming from Mumbai but there is no full proof to stamp this assumption.

The market has witnessed a loss of 90% in terms of sales revenues from HP cartridges. As per local authorities, a supplier from Mumbai’s Prakash Enterpise is responsible for supplying 50% of fake cartridges into the Agartala market, the remaining are coming from unknown suppliers.

The partners are in dire need to address the issue to the vendor but Agartala being a rather neglected and small market is hardly given much priority. Even according to local reports, fake ESET hard drives are also entering the market denting the channel economy. The same problem with no vendor representative being present in the state and the lackadaisical attitude of the representative based in Guwahati is the key reason for little or no improvement. This is resulting in utmost dejection amongst the channel market that are seeing largest share of their market pie being taken away.