Redington India
Over the year, Redington India cashed in on opportunities in verticals such as Telecom and BFSI sectors, which went in for significant technology upgrades and IT asset refresh. These verticals panned out well for the company. Meanwhile, Redington also saw good revenue gain in HPI and Acer portfolios. Storage and Security continued to offer growth opportunities.
There were some challenges as well during the last year. The company says that the investments by enterprise class customers overall were muted and selective. Slow momentum in SMB sector also acted as a dampener. Moreover, the PC and Print market growth remained a challenge. Software sector showed a lack of traction. Liquidity and AR challenges in the channel eco-system were extremely acute. Unacceptable level of defaults and extension of credit period beyond any reasonable limits resulted in sharp increase in working capital deployment. The cost of doing business also increased sharply. As a result, earnings came under increasing pressure as rebates continued to reduce.
Given the challenging market conditions, how did the company tided over the year? The company says that it aimed at consolidating its core business to ensure a stable and firm base. And it also accelerated building its Cloud portfolio and Digital Transaction Platform infrastructure and commenced building Cloud MSP team.
Meanwhile, it also engaged with customers who are participating in the Digital India/Smart City initiatives. More focus also went on initiating investments in some new, business lines, different from IT and Mobility.
In terms of significant business highlights for the company over the last year, developments like executing IT supplies part of a few of the initial Digital India/Smart City projects and new initiatives. For instance, its stateof-the-art Digital transaction platform was launched last year. This is central to its cloud business.
Meanwhile, the Cloud MSP was put in place and service offerings through partners also commenced. If one looks at SBU wise performance, the positives are - Storage, Security, Cloud, parts of Consumer PC portfolios, Apple phones and Mac business and Digital Printing Solutions portfolio. The performance was muted in Software & Commercial PC BUs.
New products added on to the portfolio are Aruba, ESRI, Parametric, PTC, Simplicity & SAS, are amongst the vendors added to its portfolio.
In terms of the outlook for FY 18, the company says that one has to watch out for an impact of GST on revenue for first two-quarters of the financial year.
It is also critical that credit hygiene in the channel is significantly improved as it has now started to seriously impact the ability of all distributors to invest in the business. This will adversely impact the support that it can extend to its channel partners. The company is expected to strongly accelerate the investments and capabilities in the cloud space to have a complete suite of ‘Managed Services’ offerings for its partners.