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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

August - 2011 - issue > Company Spotlight

Anytimeretail.com: Fair price, fair deal

Hari Anil
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Hari Anil
There is a Maximum Retail Price (MRP) and a Market Operating Price (MOP) in electronic commodity market. Mostly the customers would only get to see the MRP and not MOP, hence the customers are clueless on the huge margin that the vendors are operating with. The customers are literally getting ripped off by many of the vendors in the field. This is an unfair situation and Krishna Sumanth, an ex- Dell employee, saw it for what it is and he along with his brother Vamsi Krishna , an ex-eBay employee, decided to do something to resolve this situation.

For an Indian entrepreneur who saw this kind of success electronic retailers like Amazon.co.uk and dabs.com have in UK, it is only logical to think why the same cannot happen in India. Sumanth, when returned to India in 2005, thought on these lines. He also knew by engaging a similar method the sector can actually be made a fair play segment for the customers as well. He knew that by employing an online model high quality products can be provided to the customers at reasonable prices. This realization led him to start anytimeretail.com. The company was founded in 2010 and is based out of Bangalore, Karnataka.

The company offers products in segments like laptops, desktops, servers, peripherals, electronics, special offers, software, storage and networking, and printers. The concentration is on price and quality. “We only offer branded products to our customers, no unbranded low quality product will be there on our website, and we provide these products at a very subsidized price,” says Krishna. The company deals with more than 60 leading brands today, this list includes companies like, Nokia, Apple, Samsung, HTC, Acer, IBM, Dell, Belkin, HP, SanDisk, and more.

The SMBs are another segment that is struggling in today’s environment. The SMBs cannot afford to play the number game like large corporations, they will not be able to buy 100s of desktops or laptops in a go and get discounts. Another issue that the SMBs are facing in India is that unless the organization is registered with SEZ they are not allowed to download import equipment from abroad without duties. So the business model of anytimeretail.com lets the SMBs have all the equipment, including mid range servers, at affordable prices. This is one of those areas that the company concentrates on.

Similar companies that are in the industry has a different business model than that of anytimeretail.com, they tend to concentrate on fewer products with higher profit margin so that they can sell it for cheaper price and still make profit. But anytimeretail.com has products ranging from Rs.5 motherboard battery to Rs. 8,50,000 worth storage devices. No other company in the segment can boast of such a wide range of products.


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