Sahara Computers is growing brand in S.African IT industry

Monday, 05 April 2004, 19:30 IST
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JOHANNESBURG: Sheer determination to succeed in a highly competitive environment where many IT companies have folded up has seen Sahara Computers become the fastest growing computer equipment supplier in South Africa in just seven years. "We started in 1997 with an investment by the Gupta family from India who came here specifically to start up in the IT sector in South Africa," said Gary Naidoo, marketing manager at Sahara, that has nothing to do with the India-based Sahara India conglomerate. "They saw good potential in South Africa being an emerging market. In their first year, they only had 10 staff, but still had a turnover of 1.2 million rands. "They grew the company year by year to the extent that in the last financial year we recorded a 1.14 billion rand turnover," Naidoo told IANS. Naidoo said the immediate challenge for Sahara was to move to the top position from its current status as the number two local computer brand in South Africa and to entrench itself in Africa. "The staff complement has increased to over 320 people and we now have branches throughout South Africa. In the last three years, we also expanded to other African countries like Botswana and Kenya." Atul Gupta, a South African Indian who is managing director of Sahara Computers, attributed the success of the company to the choice of international vendors. "When it comes to designing our computers, we compare ourselves with international vendors. The reason we do that is that the components we use are from major brand suppliers. "They are either number one, two, or in the worst case, number three in their fields. So for example, our computers are based on Intel or AMD processors, the top two in the processor market. "We have mother boards, disk drives and all the various components that make up a personal computer sourced from top manufacturers in the world." Gupta said Sahara was Samsung's biggest IT partner in South Africa. While the hardware comes mainly from the Far East because of lower manufacturing costs there, Sahara uses its sister companies in India for developing software systems that are in use at the company's state-of-the-art assembly and distribution plant at Midrand, north of here. The plant has a capacity to output up to 600 computers a day. Gupta said with great pride that Sahara had built up a reputable brand name because its assembled computers were built to ISO 9001 of 2002 standards, which made them internationally acceptable and one of the first IT companies to obtain paperless ISO. "We also meet all the stringent requirements of the South African Bureau of Standards and have certification from big hardware and software companies. From Microsoft, for example, we have WHQL, which certifies that our products will work with Microsoft's software." Sahara also has a special relationship with processor manufacturer Intel. "This enables us to plan ahead in terms of what models will be coming out. So we get early advances on their roadmaps, we get special pricing, we get allocations and funding to brand the computers to create market awareness and educate people about new technologies in our computers." But the rapid rise in the market of Sahara Computers is not only because of the quality of the product. "We not only had to bring in a product of high quality to compete against well-established brands but also to make it affordable," said Gupta, adding that savings effected through experienced purchasing of branded components were passed on to consumers in the final pricing. Naidoo said Sahara was one of the few IT companies in South Africa that had shown consistent growth in recent years. "We've announced record results and very high earnings despite some of the other companies that have recently announced poor results. They attribute this largely to the rand-dollar rate affecting their business, and yes, Sahara's turnover has also certainly been affected by this. "But profitability-wise, we have still been one of the few companies which have shown a positive growth trend."
Source: IANS
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