The village panchayat is a traditional Indian rural forum for villagers to discuss, sort out their issues, debate and seek justice. On similar lines, IT-Panchayat is a series of events to bring IT dealers in small and remote towns together, discuss the issues facing them and share the experiences of resellers from across the country. The current series of IT Panchayat is funded by Hewlett-Packard Storage and is organized by the DQWeek newspaper network, one of CyberMedia's renowned publications. The IT Panchayat has helped bring out many issues regarding the handling of “dead on arrival” products, warranty, repackaged products and the grey market, undercutting and unethical competition and risks of dealing with traders who do not follow fair business principles. The platform has resolved problems of free flow of fake products and vendor initiated raids, retail and growing showroom concept, delay in settlement of back-end incentives, business from government and other segments, tax issues and more.

This platform has helped unify dealers, who often do not belong to associations, to talk with a common voice to vendors, or even government authorities. IT Panchayat has travelled to 21 locations across the country, mainly B and C category towns. It's brought together small IT dealers who rarely get a chance to participate in technology events.

The forum identifies and guides the resellers to look into newer avenues of business for growth and profitability. It also stresses the need for constant education and upgradation of channel community to move from box-pushing concept to solution providers in business. The feedback helps the vendors to identify the market and provide training to the channel partners.

About CyberMedia

CyberMedia is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with nine publications (including Dataquest and PCQuest) in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics and biotech areas; and a media value chain including the internet (www.ciol.com), events and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), content outsourcing, multimedia, gaming, and media education.

For further information, please contact

Sumit Sharma
CyberMedia
Cyber-House, B-35, Sector 32 Institutional
Gurgaon, Haryana -- 122002, India
Tel: 124-2381673-80 (prefix 95 from Delhi)
Email: sumits@cmil.com