The Association of System Integrators and Retailers in Technology (ASIRT) conducted its flagship Information Exchange Monthly Event – TECHDAY on 23rd June 2022 at Hotel Parle International, Vile Parle. This was its 101st TECHDAY.
Kaustubh Kulkarni, the host for the TECHDAY #101 welcomed all guests and invited Sanjay Ruparel – President, ASIRT to kick start the event. Sanjay anecdotally explained how a group of like-minded IT Entrepreneurs came together for the benefit of the community as a whole and founded ASIRT. The audience gave a huge round of applause to these pioneers and visionaries. Sanjay went on to explain the tagline and pillars of ASIRT, which are Partner, Progress and Evolve. Over the last 10 years, ASIRT has helped increase the presence, weightage and prosperity of 210 partners.
The key takeaways from his presentation were:
- ASIRT is the only IT Association that conducts its marquee monthly TECHDAYS. It is the most well-attended monthly technology exchange and the feedback after every event has been overwhelmingly positive.
- ASIRT has been focussing on the SYSTEM INTEGRATORS and this dedicated focus has brought in positive growth amongst all its members.
- 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.
The Membership team was felicitated for the great work they were doing in onboarding new members. A few of the new members who joined ASIRT recently were introduced to everyone by Jayesh Sompura, part of the Membership Committee.
Mayank Thakkar from Lym Technologies (CCTV), Hiten Sanghvi from Activolt Tech Solutions (Power and IT Solutions), Nilesh Tupe from Hard-disk Repairing Center (Data recovery Solutions), Pratik Shah from ITCG (Value Added Distributor for Cyber Security, Backup and Storage Solutions) and Keyur Doshi from Microcare Services (Genuine and Transparent Services in IT) were invited to the stage to quickly introduce themselves and their organizations to the community.
This was followed by sessions from both the sponsors of ASIRT TECHDAY #101.
The first to speak was Sumeet Kela – Founder & Technical Director of Net Protector Anti-Virus, Gold Sponsor for ASIRT TECHDAY. He spoke about the NPAV journey as a family-managed System Integrator to an International Cyber Security AV solutions company of repute. An important point that everyone noted was that NPAV was a growing company under the “Make In India” banner with a loog list of International Certification in the Cyber Protection space. he informed everyone about the opportunity to work with NPAV on GeM portal, since they were registered there and were doing great work to protect the Indian Government entities. A point to also note was their strong presence in Indian Education Institutes as well as some of the Mid-size Banks and Financial Companies. A few of the salient features that he shared about NPAV were:
- Low processing needed to run; hence NPAV was useful even for those procuring refurbished PCs
- Money-back Guarantee for Ransomware
- 100% Data Protection Guarantee
He spoke about their flagship use-cases: Total Security, Z-Security for automatically backing up critical data to Cloud and Total Windows Server Protection for physical and virtual servers. Salient features like Endpoint Security for LAN & Cloud, Web Control, Web Firewall Gateways, Enterprise Backup, Password Vaulting, Secure RDP Management, Windows 10 Boosting and Document Locker were accepted well by the Government and Corporates alike. He also introduced their newest product called EduSafe Firewall for protecting Android-based Mobiles and Tablets that are used by minors. The session was very interactive with lots of quality questions being answered by Sumeet.
Sumeet had a key message for everyone: “NPAV is like the medicinal pill that the ASIRT Community (the IT Doctors) can prescribe to customers (patients) for maintaining good health of their infrastructure. Because of our focus on R&D to improve system performance along with ample protection, working with us as a partner is beneficial to ensure customer stickiness as well as in helping partners make better bottom-lines selling our products. When you combine that with our 200 R&D Engineers and 100+ Tech Support Staff, there is a superb message to convey to your customers.
The next sponsor session was delivered by S Viswanathan – Founder and CEO of Inspace Technologies, Co-sponsor. He started his session with an interesting note that he was here to positively impact the balance sheet of everyone present. He spoke about Inspace being in the IT Services space and recently expanding into the US and UK Markets with more than 300 people and 1000+ customers with 80% repeat customer buying cycles. He went on to speak about a new Services vertical Process called IT Audit, recognised by Government of India with a Copyright for the Process from the HRD Ministry. This was to basically ensure monetization of services which would otherwise have been delivered free of cost to clients. The services start with a customer problem statement, a thorough Audit of their Network, Infrastructure, Systems and Software using a certified Audit team and a detailed Gap Analysis with the Budgets and Time required by the customer to fix the gaps. The services included Digital Transformation Readiness Audit with Digital SWOT Analysis, VAPT Audit, ERP and other Software Audit and IT Capex & Opex Audit to review IT Spends and Processes. He went on to explain the various ways in which ASIRT partners can work with the Inspace team on a recurring or a one-time commission basis.
Viswanathan reminisced: “Partners leave money on the table by giving services free of cost to customers. It’s high-time we monetize this. We can help customers with Auditing their systems and processes thoroughly and so that ASIRT Partners can get their due for the effort, And the customers know the Gaps in their setup, for which they can take decisions to mitigate risks. It’s a win-win for everyone! Our organization believes in Trust, Teamwork and Transparency, ensuring the fact that whether an ASIRT member just refers or owns a customer opportunity, the customer is locked with the partner forever.”
The last session of the TECHDAY was dedicated to the ASIRT Evolve Speaker. Evolve Sessions are another first for any IT association, where speakers are invited to speak on varied topics like Communication, Health & Wellness, Finance, Human Resources etc to exchange perspectives between the Subject Matter Expert and the ASIRT members. The Evolve speaker invited for TECHDAY #101 was Nancy Shah, to interact and speak about Body Language – A Language Without Barriers. Nancy is a well-known Body Language expert apart from being a highly-followed Public Speaking Coach and an EMCEE. She started off to a very attentive and pumped-up audience with the statement: “Humans are Meaning-making Machines – because Body Language is one of the main factors for making that First Impression.” The session was important because it touched upon how ASIRT partners could present themselves to their Clients, Partners & Employees in a more effective manner. The session was very participative and the anecdotes and the picture cues shown during the session made people realise about how we get Judged by others since we were doing the same after seeing those picture cues about emotions, what would have happened, what was wrong etc. Another key takeaway proven through examples was Body Language would be most effective along with the speech.
An important point made by Nancy was, “ZERO nervousness is overconfidence! Everybody feels nervous and being nervous is normal. How to hide that nervousness with the right body language is something that good speakers and successful people have realised over a period of time. Because you are nervous, you are trying to be more prepared, which actually works positively towards developing more confidence.
So, hiding your nervousness behind a smile, hand gestures or a posture is something that one can work upon. Also, one needs to be aware of the culture of the people that you are interacting, as the regular gestures you may use may mean something completely different there! So, it is important that we are aware of our surroundings and work towards being composed.”
The TECHDAY officially concluded after these interesting sessions and perspectives. The host thanked everyone for attending and asked everyone to eagerly await the next TECHDAY announcement. The overall outlook of the success of these sessions could be ascertained by the fact that there were a lot of interactions by ASIRT members with the Sponsors and the Evolve Speaker even after the sessions were long over.
