Mithi, one of the players in the email and collaboration market, is expanding its channel base in India. At present, Mithi has 20 channel partners, tiered as national business partners, region based partners and local partners across India.
Explaining the concept, Ashish Kotamkar, Vice President (Marketing), Mithi, said, "Big system integrators are our national business partners. Some of them have even done large scale implementation for us. The region-based partners work on the same lines, as the national business partners, however, are restricted to doing business in specific zones or regions. The local partners are present in cities and bring value in term of relationships. They invest in training and customer engagement, feed-back and services."
On the kind of investment the company expects from channel partners, he said, "Investment is limited to getting trained on our products. They should be available, take care of demos, gather requirements, keep close touch with customers, what are his expectations, etc. We will work out the architecture."
On the break-up ratio on the kind of channel partners the company is keen to appoint, Kotamkar's prompt response is the local partners. "They are more flexible and willing."
However, going down the line, Mithi will also be able to develop products that would be sold through distributors and resellers, he said. On the pricing model, he said that the products are sold on subscription options for product and support, number of users and number of servers
The company has presence in the healthcare, R&D establishments, financial institutions, educational institutions, government, software, defense, manufacturing, banks, NGOs, agro industries, logistics, media, Internet service providers, etc.
Some of its customers include United India Insurance Company, the Aditya Birla Group, Indian Bank, Kalyani Steels, Tata Projects, HCL Infinet, First Source, ITC e-choupal, etc. Installations spanning over 40 cities in India and abroad are maintained, monitored and managed remotely from Mithi's support center at Pune, according to the company website.
