ASIRT was founded in 2012 with the intention of creating a voice for the System Integrators and Retainers in IT and to foster the development of a unified SI and Retail ecosystem. We recently celebrated our 10th Anniversary with a big bash. In the last 10 years, ASIRT has grown to a well-respected and highly-awarded association. Today, ASIRT is Mumbai’s largest aggregation of Indian ISVs, SIs, Resellers and Cloud solution providers. In an interaction with NCN, Mr. Sanjay Ruparel, President of ASIRT, shares about their association’s policy, objectives and future plans.
Q. Please explain how ASIRT originated, its journey so far, and the important milestones.
We have been able to foster strong collaboration to assist the community in achieving greater success and in expanding business boundaries. A few of our very unique features as an association that have helped us carve a niche and leadership for collaboration are:
- TECHDAYS: These are ASIRT’s monthly Knowledge Sessions for the benefit of the community from in Technology, Business, Processes, Resourcing, Skills etc. ASIRT recently enabled it’s 100 TECHDAY last month!
- CONSORTIUMS: ASIRT has been able to grow as an association and show differentiation because of its unique CONSORTIUMS that have been formed with a lot of analysis and foresight. Members within a consortium share their skills and alliances and together, members are able to address complex use-cases in front of their customers.
ASIRT members contribute to about INR 3500 crores of business for the IT Industry. We have grown into an Association having 220 members and we are adding new members every day!
Q. How ASIRT is helpful to SIs and Retailers in the Mumbai regions? What are the ASIRT’s latest initiatives?
ASIRT has been championing the cause of Growth and Collaboration within the Mumbai IT Community. ASIRT’s mission has been to arm Members with domain and peripheral knowledge that enables them to offer futuristic yet realistic solutions to their customers. Constant and consistent interaction of members with Domain Experts and Professionals has helped members immensely to make use of the ecosystem to their advantage. A few why ASIRT has been very successful are as follows:
- Assisting Members with Financial Solutions to meet their Cash flow and Growth needs.
- Equipping them and their teams with new Technology Knowledge and Training.
- Enabling them to leverage Social Media for business growth.
- Connecting them across Boundaries to reach out to their PAN India customer base.
- Establishing Visibility for embers pan-India.
The diversity of ASIRT’s membership across segments and facets of IT, their experience & subject knowledge and their readiness and eagerness to share, interact and learn, have all been ASIRT’s assets in creating a strong Ecosystem for Growth.
How do you negotiate with the government authorities to revise policies in favour of the partner community?
ASIRT has always risen to represent the Mumbai IT community for policies within the State and Central Governments. The Management Committee of ASIRT has been actively involved in voicing support and concerns for policies. Also, collaboration with other National Associations has helped ASIRT to become a good representative of the interests of members, industry and business.
What challenges are you facing and how are you resolving them?
ASIRT has realised that the last couple of years have really redefined the way business is done now. Some changes are more pronounced that the others like service delivery criticality, managing payment terms to create advantage, cross-regional reach for multi-location customers etc. Our focus is to ensure that an ecosystem of advantage is created for ASIRT members through validation of skills (ASIRT GOLD Partner Program), Business-oriented skills sessions, financial planning sessions and human resource planning sessions. Essentially, ASIRT has converted the challenges into an advantage by becoming a common pool of resources that can be used by all Members to gain a tremendous edge and advantage in the market.
What are your plans for the next two years?
One of the aims of ASIRT is to connect with fellow business people in the Information Technology area across India. We intend to highlight the advantages that we carry and use that to positively impact the whole India Business Ecosystem. The hitherto SI program is now being expanded to include OEMs and Distributors with a provision of these to have a service and solutions arm to be in sync with the ethos of ASIRT. Our motto of Partner, Progress, Evolve has helped us identify the Partner community that we want to onboard, the path to Progressing business for all members and Evolving as the best Collaborative platform for the community’s benefit.
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