B Swaminathan
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), an umbrella body of small traders and businessmen, termed the center’s decision of clearing forign direct investment in e-tail as “extremely unfortunate”. Ironically, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), the traders wing of RSS said the decision was “really shocking”. Both said the move would negatively impact not just traders and businessmen but also the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector. Traders and small businessmen have traditionally comprised a key support base of the BJP.
Industry leaders across the country call his a backdoor entry to global retailers that will allow them to sidestep restrictions in multi-brand retail as ecommerce has no geographical restrictions.
I was interacting with few channel partners from Tamil Nadu who are gearing up for their annual meeting next month. Out of four, two had expressed concerns on the way vendors respond for sponsorships. I a place where a channel partner who use to stock 200 laptops earlier is now stocking only 40 laptops. While the expenses of the employees, real estate rents and logistics are increasing, the margins are decreasing double the level.
“Gone are the days where the vendors use to listen to the channel for their demands and use to find opportunities to spend for them. Now the situation is different. The Chennai based vendor which is into power-solution segment, who had grown in the market with the help of the channels had shown no interest in any of the marketing options provided by the association”, says one channel partner who has been interacting with those vendors.
It is very unfortunate that many established vendors start shrinking their marketing funds towards channel. However, I notice plenty of Indian based e-commerce companies coming forward to enhance the retailers to an e-commerce operator. These companies focus on providing a e-platform for the vendors across the country. With this, the IT retailers can sell IT products within their city as the users will be spotting their shop on a GPS-based search. Apart from this, the IT channel partners from the small-towns can go ahead a step forward by e-selling non-IT products across the globe. For instance, an IT channel partner from Erode in Tamil Nadu can e-sell turmeric powder to a customer in Uttar Pradesh as the Turneric-resellers in Erode might not be tech-savvy like a IT reseller.
Whatsoever, I still find many growing vendors and few established vendors are still in a firm decision to make sure that the traditional channel partner model will survive at least for next five years.