SITA expo focuses on laptops

South Gujarat Information Technologists Association (SITA), the IT
association in Surat, held its second mobile devices expo from Oct 2-4, 2005.
The focus of the expo was to spread the awareness of laptops usage among the
users.

The expo had a total number of 26 stalls with 20 participants and was held at
Hotel Holiday Inn in Surat. Other than the local channel partners of the region,
the participants included some vendor companies like Acer, IBM, Sony, Toshiba,
Samsung, HCL and LG. When asked Jwalant Shroff, President of SITA that how was
the present year's expo different from the last year, he said, "Last year
the expo was in a very primitive stage, where we had to spread awareness about
this expo. So it was very difficult for us to get people to participate. But
this year, we got a very good response and all the stalls were booked six days
in advance."

According to Shroff the awareness of laptop in Surat is comparatively low
compared to the other cities. So the expo mainly showcased the laptops of the
leading brands. Shroff added, "There were also some other mobile devices
displayed in the expo, including the flash drives, MP3 players etc. However we
could not manage to get displays of high-end mobile phones because there are no
leading players here."

SITA did not get any sponsors for the event and the expenses of the entire
event was arranged from the Association's own fund. Shroff said that the
Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce Industries helped us to organize this expo.
He said, "This year we have managed to get a revenue amount of around Rs 1
lakh, which we are planning to donate from charity because this is the 10th year
of SITA. Besides this, we are also planning to set-up free computer center in
Surat with this money."

Shilpi Das

Mumbai