VAR Symposium 2019 continued the momentum which was set into motion by VAR Symposium 2018. The coming together of key VARs from across the country along with the sales and marketing professionals from selected corporates and technical leaders set the stage ready for this year’s Symposium. The day-long session witnessed new business strategies being discussed, with a special focus on how to maximize partner profitability, thereby steering their business transformation. A total of 100+ VARs including MSPs, Integrators, Solution Providers and VARs converged, shared ideas and initiated discussions that define the current partner ecosystem in the country.

The theme for this year’s event is "Partner Transformation”, and the discussions during the day revolved around this topic. The event commenced with the lamp lighting ceremony in the august presence of guests like Vipin Tyagi, ED - C-DOT; Harold D’costa, CEO - IQSS;, Dr Ramesh Subramaniam - Motivational; Kaushik Pandiya, President - FAIITA; Dr. Deepak Kr. Sahu, Editor-in-Chief, VARINDIA and S Mohini Ratna, Editor - VARINDIA.

Dr Deepak Kr. Sahu, Editor-in-Chief, VARINDIA kick-started the event by giving his inaugural speech in which he highlighted the fact of how digitisation is creating tremendous opportunities for economies across the globe. “As a media house, our focus has been Technology, that is at the forefront of everything we do. I think most organisations acknowledge the fact that IT can play an important role to deliver value and competitive edge to the organisation. Many organisations consider such slowdown situation as best opportunity to sharpen their strategy using IT. However, the focus is more on direct tangible outcome projects rather than intangible.”

Harold D’çosta, CEO - IQSS delivered the first speech of the day who spoke on the opportunities in the cyber space in terms of various avenues which could be there for the VARs.

Vipin Tyagi, ED - C-DOT spoke on how satellite links are the primary means of connectivity to remote and far-flung regions of the country and that they are the backup links for large number of terrestrial connectivity in the mainland.

In a first of its kind that was introduced at this year’s VAR Symposium, the Super Session saw five partners giving their presentation and speaking on Business Transformation; the speakers were Vikas Bhonsle, CEO - Crayon Software Experts India; Manjeet Singh, Sr. VP (Sales) - RAH Infotech; Satish Arora, Zonal Head (North) – Savex Technologies; Prince Dhawan, Assistant General Manager - Sales & Business Development, NTT - Netmagic and Ranjit GK, CEO & MD - Vaibhav Inc.

In the Session III, Igor Borovikov, Chairman of Board of Directors – Softline Inc., who had come all the way from Russia addressed the audience on how his company helps customers achieve digital transformation and protect their business with cybersecurity technologies.

Rajan S Mathews, Director General - COAI spoke on the present state of the telecom sector and the opportunities B2B partners can explore in it.

In the corporate presentations, four vendors addressed the audience and elucidated their strategy on how to accelerate partner transformation. Ajay Sehgal, Executive Vice President – Enterprise Business (Channels & SOHO Business) – Vodafone Idea Ltd.; Krunal Patel, Head of India & South Asia – TeamViewer; Neerav Kumar, Director, Strategy Initiative – CommScope; Uday Bhanu Das, Co-Founder & Chief Executive – Beyond Security Technologies spoke on how their respective companies have been successful in transforming their customers’ lives with the help of technology.

Rajesh Sankhe, Product Manager – LG Electronics spoke on the advantages customers can enjoy by moving to the Cloud.

Panel discussion that followed soon after was moderated by Dr Deepak Kr. Sahu, Editor-in-Chief, VARINDIA and the panelists who joined the discourse were Sailajananda Nayak, CMO – Ingram Micro; Vikas Bhonsle, CEO – Crayon Software Experts India; Suresh Ramani, President – IAMCP India; Alok Gupta, President – PCAIT and Champak Raj Gurjar, Founder President – FAIITA.

The biggest attraction of the Symposium was honouring the Champions, where 100 Eminent VARs of India were awarded in different categories of Best Solution & Service Partner, Best Sub Distributor, Best VAD, Best Retailer, Best Cloud Solution Partner, Best Digital Transformation Partner, Best Solution Partner, Best Distributor, Best Collaboration Partner, Best Infrastructure Partner, Best Information Security Partner, Best IT Service Partner, Best Networking Partner, Best Security Solution Partner and Best System Integrator.

They are the 100 top performing partners in the country who collectively manage about Rs. 30,000 crore turnovers annually.