Cyberstar appoints authorized partners for MSI
By Anil Ramakrishnan , May 16, 2003

After taking over responsibility of streamlining Micro-Star International's (MSI) Indian channel and marketing strategies, Cyberstar Infocom, has appointed 14 Cyberstar MSI Authorized Partners in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai.

The Authorized Partners have been appointed only after they have agreed not to push other competing brands, said Narendra Dubey, director, Cyberstar. "We intend to have five Authorized Partners in each major city by June-end."

Cyberstar has also appointed 8-10 system assemblers in each major city to push MSI products, but they will be recognized and authorized only by this quarter-end, informed Dubey.

Taiwan-based Frank Sherap, country manager, (India), MSI, said, "We are in talks with a couple of ASPs and expect to finalize a tie-up soon. Especially for motherboards, we are launching products for entry-level, mid-end and high-end--with competitive pricing. For the OEMs, we have a range of integrated chipset-based boards of Intel and AMD."

The Taiwanese vendor has also launched media campaigns and channel incentive schemes through its Indian partner. Sherap said, "Besides marketing, we are identifying mediums to build up MSI brand image through media, channel schemes, pricing and variety of new motherboards, VGA cards, etc."

Already, it has begun placing advertisements in IT and business publications. And for the first time has started a channel incentive scheme for the first time in India, Dubey claimed. According to the scheme, Golden Summer (valid from May 5 till June 30), channel partners are entitled to gold coins for bulk purchases made from Cyberstar.

The optimism of Cyberstar seems to have rubbed off on its resellers as well. Avinash Kukreja, director, Bangalore-based Kukreja Electronics, said, "MSI's AMD-based motherboards are selling well in India and I have been pushing it since two years. Now, with the new channel and marketing initiatives my task of selling the products will become easier."

Added Datta MN, regional manager, (South), Great World, another Bangalore-based MSI partner, "We have been selling MSI motherboards since two months and have sold 1,000 units per month. We are waiting for the vendor's ASP tie-up to boost sales."

Mumbai-based Priya Limited is the other distributor of MSI, which recently broke ties with SES Technologies.

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