Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd has entered Chandigarh with the opening of its service hub here,its first to the north of Delhi.
The proliferation of the manufacturing and service industry in the area lured Microsoft to open its marketing and servicing hub in the Union territory.
The company was present in 13 locations (6 major cities and 7 smaller towns) and would set up offices in another 17 towns in the next two years, having a network of 30 hubs to service more than 100 towns across India, said Rajeev Mittal, group director, small and medium enterprise, Microsoft (India).
The company was contemplating expanding into Ludhiana and Jaipur in the near future, he added.
Mittal said the personal computers (PC) market was growing at 50 per cent and the server market at 40 per cent in the non-metros, which meant a tremendous potential in tier-II towns. According to Mittal, there were 25,000 small and medium business enterprises in the region under different verticals.
He said the presence of the company in Chandigarh would help their channel partners to grow, improve their partner network and serve their customers more efficiently.
The company invites its channel partners through on-line exams and certifies them as partners.
The company had customised packages for localised clusters like the hosiery and automobile parts cluster in Ludhiana, the handtools cluster and sports cluster in Jalandhar and the textiles cluster in Amritsar, said Rajesh Kumar, head-small business, Microsoft Corporation (India).
An entrepreneur could avail the services of Microsoft at an investment as low as Rs 35,000 but the ideal plan would be to invest 1 per cent of its turnover into software business solutions, he said.
He added that the entrepreneurs in smaller towns might not be technology savvy, in which case 'merabusiness.com' is a portal to give them elementary knowledge on the benefits of technology on getting cutting edge in the market in the competitive world.