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Better Logistics At Better Price

In conversation with Shailendra Gupta, Group CEO, Tech Pacific Holdings post acquisiton of Tech Pacific by Ingram Micro.

Immediately after the announcement, the market began speculating about the possible outcome of the acquisition based on conjecture. There were many rumors floating around about changes in the credit policy, product portfolio and the channel partners. status in the combined entity. But now we have begun communicating to our channel partners and things are beginning to settle down.

For quite sometime now we had been looking for a strategic partner who could help strengthen our channel and widen our products and services portfolio, and our reach into new geographies. The merger will provide us economies of scale and enable us to leverage the cost structure benefits, which will be passed on to our customers.

But there are concerns that this move has given birth to a monopoly. Just merging two entities does not double the strength of an organization. There is a need to consistently meet customer and manufacturer expectations. Our size does not give us extra bargaining power. The contracts extended by the principal are identical for all distributors. Manufacturers have not meted out any preferential treatment earlier, nor will they do so now. Resellers today have much more choice at its disposal. We therefore need to work even harder to win customers. business.

Channel partners will not find any change whatsoever in our functioning. Resellers can now look forward to streamlining its buying from a single source. This will strengthen them, as they can now focus more on selling rather than buying. We believe, this will provide resellers an opportunity to increase profits by saving buying costs and also getting benefits of our leveraged cost structure. Our economies of scale should enable us invest more in infrastructure development and significantly raise the bar for service quality.

The reseller also stands to benefit from the exclusive tie-ups we have with several manufacturers. Principals too can leverage a larger, more efficient infrastructure to penetrate deeper into the market. TechPac is known for its strengths in logistics while Ingram is known for better pricing. We will attempt to provide the best of both worlds to our resellers -- better logistics at better price.

The rumors that the credit limit will drastically reduce are not true. We will continue to extend the combined credit enjoyed by the market prior to the acquisition. India is a high growth market. We want to grow here. By restricting credit we would check our own growth.

We have no doubt in our mind that we cannot afford to get complacent. We will strive to add value to our offerings and continue to give our competitors a tough time, as they will have to compete with us on various fronts including service quality, product expertise, price and reach.

The amalgamation does not have a time frame. But nothing will change in the next few months. The two companies will continue to function as separate entities. But our size will allow us to get closer to the customer and be much more supportive.

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