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Fly-by-Night Operators Swindle Kolhapur Partners
By
Prasanth Menon
Mumbai, Apr 3, 2007
Vanishing companies are becoming synonymous with IT channel business with fraudsters taking unsuspecting partners for a ride despite occasional arrests of the guilty and the words of counseling by traders' bodies.
The vanishing companies have struck it again. This time in the leather hub of Kolhapur in the western state of Maharashtra.
Annoyed resellers are left leaking their wounds as the fraudsters have vanished after duping the market for an estimated about Rs 10 lakh about one and a half month back.
Resellers say the menace has been going on frequently with much smaller players in the game, but this time the trade fallout is quite high.
"We have been experiencing these instances wherein the imposters have duped at least 8 resellers including sub-distributors where the amount varied between Rs 5 to Rs 10 lakh," said Arun Managave, Aditya Peripherals.
He said the modus operandi of the defaulters has been to plunge into business all of a sudden, build relationship and would vanish.
Most of the imposters, local partners say, flee the township once their racket stands exposed. Some of the fraudsters have fled to Gujarat, Pune while a few are reported to have even sought for new shelter in Hubli in Karnataka.
A few of the firms which got exposed include the likes of Nikita Computers, Icon Computers, SAAD Computers and Abhi's Electromedia.
According to rough estimates, the partners in the city have probably sustained a whopping loss of over Rs 50 lakh in last few years.
The crux of the issue remains in the fact that notwithstanding forewarning, the imposters are able to exploit market dynamics and manipulate things to their advantage. Partners say these frauds are perpetrated not by strangers to the industry. Rather most fraudsters are players who pretty well have the knowledge of the market operations.
The crisis has come at a worse time for Kolhapur-based channel because the 5-lakh strong population of the township has not been able to give a formal IT trade association.
"Last year, around 60 partners came together to float a group but the effort did not yield any result," Mangave said adding similar moves could not help establish a IT traders' body even a few years back.
These series of frauds in Kolhapur come close on the heels of major frauds reported last year in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
It is worth mentioning that various resellers' bodies like TAIT and Delhi-based DCTA have time and again advised partners to desist from doing business with neo players, especially based on the word of mouth.
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Arunji and Prashantji, time demands that the entire channel body of south maharashtra stand unified during such times of adversity and fight this menace vengefully to the core, channel forums and regular tete-a-tetes are best platforms to discuss such issues and have a preemptive strategy in place. Such incidents sadly lowers the channels business sentiments altogether. |
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- Sunil Gera,
Sahara Computer, Mumbai
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YES IT IS GOOD COVERAGE ! ARUN, THANKX 2 U TOO AS WE ALSO FACING SAME PROBLEM IN OUR REGION.
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- prashant modi,
ace mind comput, satara
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GOOD INFORMATION FOR CHANNEL THAT AT- LEAST NOW THAY CAN TAKE CARE OF THESE PARTIES IN FUTURE.GOOD WORK & THANKS A LOT FOR CHANNEL TIMES. |
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- ARUN MANAGAVE,
ADITYA PERIPHER, KOLHAPUR
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Of course it is SAD. It is the part of the business. But one has to be careful before dealing with new entrants to business. One must the companies credibility before starting transaction with them. It is very simple put forward advice but practically it is difficult. Make a healthy competition in the business an I am sure this will not happen. This happen due to lack of coordination and trust between the existing traders. this can very well avoided if we build a good relation with our own group. |
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- ashutosh,
oribytes, cuttack
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it's true. but if we make our strict policy for our payment terms like national distributors then i think we will able to reslove this matter.
i know that this will not be happend instantly but we at least try for this. ---sunil s patil ( pacific kolhapur) |
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- sunil s patil,
m/s pacific, kolhapur
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