Sakri Appointed as National Distributor of K7

In a bid to expand itself in 2015, Sakri It Solutions, Pune based Value Added Distributor has joined hands with K7 Computing to market and sell K7 products pan India. With distinguished & extensive experience in marketing and selling computer security products in a leadership position, the company has a very strong channel base even in upcountry regions of India where they will be positioning K7 products with a strategic roadmap.

“We were planning for expansion of our product portfolio and were talking to so many other Vendors and we found that there is a good potential in K7 where in we can take the product to the next level and at the same time we have the liberty to demonstrate our inherent strength of making a product into market leader where we get the liberty what we want to do and at the same also in sync with our thought process of a long term player and planning. We will be positioning all the products of K7 pan India,” informs Ravi Lakshman, CEO and Director, Sakri IT Solutions.

The company is focusing on two kinds of products retail and enterprise products. The team of Sakri is studying the retail products and identifying what are their businesses. “We are emphasizing to work on our weakness and make that weakness our strength over a period of time. We have started identifying the places where we have to be strong. We are going to be focused there and we are going to increase our revenue so that it will add a larger chunk to our growth,” shares Lakshman.

The company is aggressive to position the products in every market be it metro or upcountry regions of India. Depending upon the market they will position the product. “We have to take a very holistic approach for positioning the product and have to understand the complete product positioning be it positioning the product, being positioning the product in the channel, be end user awareness and building the brand. All these three go hand in hand. So we are addressing each and everything so that on the whole the product will grow at an exponential rate in next couple of months,” says Lakshman.

With varied anti-virus brands plying in the country and they have been the most favored brands regionally, Sakri will be developing a strategy to position K7 among its competition while creating a pull and push demand in the market. “You need to actually educate the end customers that there are other products available which are equal or better and priced better in all aspect. There are two kinds of approaches in the market one is the push and the other is pull. The push happens if you have a strong channel distribution when you say the channel distribution the first and foremost that we see is that channel has to have confidence in us that we protect them, protect their interest and ensure their margins. Once that happens the product is positioned from a channel per say so that is the part of a job. Then the next one is product pull and it comes when there is awareness in the end customers so that needs to be addressed separately. We need to address these two issues for which we are having plans to support the channel by giving them margins, protecting their interest. For the end customers we need to go to them and tell about our product. What are the strengths of the product so those kind of marketing activities we are trying to launch,” explains Lakshman.

On educating the channel partners about the anti-virus he asserts, “Some of the strategies which we are taking is that we also have to educate the partner so the lower partner level is, he has more interaction with the end customer. If you go to the reseller he should know what is your product? so for that we are having a separate roadmap where we want to address that. Yes we are aware and that is also one of our agendas to educate them. From time to time we will organize activities where we will educate the channel partners also. We will have the technical people to conduct the training programs pan India. These events will be on regular basis.”

Being a year of hope and expansion Sakri will be focusing to make a niche place in marketing their four products namely Micromax, K7, Wintab, and Microsoft. “This year our focus will be K7 because we need to put things in place. The association is new so it takes time before it gets into an auto mode.”

The strength of Sakri is its channel partners and the company wants to support and save the channel partners’ faith. While working for them, Lakshman believes in protecting the interest of the channel partners. The company is giving the confidence to the channel partners even at a time when they are skeptical of doing businesses with the vendors and the VADs of the country. With unethical prices has almost hit their pockets badly, they have been losing faith in the business.

However, ensuring to protect their channel partners and deal with this untoward situation, sakri has developed a strategy and guidelines for them. “We don’t supply them directly, they are going and picking up from the market and then ruining the market. We only have to ensure and educate channel that if you know that it is going then stop it. We can definitely minimize the loss but can’t make it zero. We have to protect the channel partners otherwise it won’t be a sustainable business. I want to keep the 95% people happy which is channel. Online has never a threat to channel but there is a threat on unethical prices to these people which they are creating but their objective is different,” explains Lakshman.