FAIITA promises to bring new sunrise in the channel business

The newly formed national federation vowed to fight against the unfair trade practices in the channel

The channel community is the oldest and strongest community in India. The community survived from storms of challenges and it will stand strong with dignity in the future. The third conclave of newly formed Federation of All India IT Associations (FAIITA) concluded with a promise to bring a new sunrise in the channel business.

FAIITA organized its third conclave to decide the action plan and future roadmap of the federation in Mumbai on 27th and 28th June. Around 26 associations across the country participated in the conclave. The conclave aimed to decide the priority areas of FAIITA ahead. FAIITA decided the action plan on various issues, including OLS, B2B portal and organizational structure.

 “We have gathered here to discuss about the future roadmap of FAIITA. We invited vendors to discuss about the pricing issue. We brought the point to vendors clearly that the aggressive price wars among the OLS portals are now really getting on our nerves and they need to act upon it immediately”, said Champakraj Gurjar, president of FAIITA.

On the query on any commitment on the pricing issue by vendors like HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus who participated in the conclave, Gurjar said, “Vendors claim that they have improved the situation, however, we are not seeing any changes.”

Hari Balasubramanian, Senior Vice President of FAIITA seemed annoyed on brands’ policies for channel. “We have told the brands clearly that if they give any new technology model to certain marketplaces, that will be objected by us. The channel has built the brand and if such things happen, we may think to switch our loyalty to another brand”, he said.

Gurjar again clarified that the national forum was not against the online market places, but they want level playing field for all the stakeholders in the channel business. Balasubramanian said that apart from price under cutting, they would protest against any channel policies of the brands that would restrict the traditional channel partners.

“If we get concrete evidence that any brand is involved in any kind of unfair trade practice, we will stop supporting that respective brand”, he said.

On the front of representing channel’s issues in front of the government, Balasubramanian said that there were some issues which required to be sorted out at the national level.

“Governments came and go, but the channel business is still there. We have survived on our own strengths. We expect that the government should immediately provide ease to the small entrepreneurs”, he said.

In a query that how FAIITA address differences in opinion among certain associations, Balasubramanian that some people with vested interest were trying to malign the image of the national forum.

“If president of any IT association comment anything about FAIITA, only that would be considered as their official stand. If we will find FAIITA members are indulged in negative commenting, we will initiate disciplinary action against them”, he said.

Talking about the organizational structure of FAIITA, Gurjar said that every federation will have their representation in the general body of the national forum. All associations connected with the state federations would automatically become members associations of FAIITA. The state issues would be addressed by the state federations, however, they may seek FAIITA’s assistance.

FAIITA has constituted four committees which would be responsible to perform specific tasks. Likewise OLS committee headed by S Kartikeyan, a Government committee headed by Mahinder Agarwal, Organisational committee headed by Arun Kumar Dey and Grievance committee headed by Pawan Jajodia has been constituted. Alok Gupta, president of Delhi based PCAIT has been appointed as a national spokesperson of FAIITA. The federation will organize its fourth conclave to review the activities in Goa, most probably in the last week of September.