Dell and CIO Association of India launch eMavericks to nurture e-commerce industry

Dell and CIO Association of India (CAI) today announced the launch of e-Mavericks, an initiative to nurture the e-commerce ecosystem by providing agile technology and access to angel investors. The platform is the first-of-its-kind providing an opportunity for e-commerce companies to meet and discuss business and technology related challenges and opportunity.

E-commerce in India has been growing rapidly with the establishment of hundreds of new e-commerce companies. According to a research done by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) along with Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), the e-commerce industry is likely to see a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35 per cent and cross the $100-billion mark in value over the next five years. With the growing competitiveness in the sector, it has become imperative for e-commerce companies to give due consideration to the implementation of robust IT infrastructure in their respective organizations.

Ravindra Krishnappa, CEO of Collatebox, an active angel investor and one of the 50 participants at the launch event which took place on Saturday said, "I was delighted to be part of this launch event. This is a much needed initiative that brings in scale thinking on technology for entrepreneurs. Not only did the entrepreneurs discuss online and ecommerce related business issues, but, there were quite a few relevant points made on opportunities in openstack, supply chain optimisation etc." said Ravindra Krishnappa, CEO of Collatebox and an active angel investor.

Another participant, Amit Sharma, a serial entrepreneur in the e-commerce space, currently working on his third start-up said: "It was amazing to be part of eMavericks launch event and interacting with so many exciting ecommerce entrepreneurs.”

Ranjit Metrani, Director & General Manager, Geo Head – South, Dell India said: “According to a recent report by Forrester, the internet population will have 125 million online buyers by the end of 2019, which also implies the e-commerce sector in India is expected to grow exponentially. Dell is known as the pioneer of the e-commerce concept, when in 1996, it opened website for business.

Today Dell is a large integrated IT Company and has provided technology solutions to reputed companies such as Flipkart, MakeMyTrip,  eBay and Shutterfly among many others in the online space. We provide our customers with future ready technology which enables them to provide not just technology solutions but derive business benefits.”

Speaking at the launch, Mr. Sudharsan R, Commercial Marketing Head, Dell India said: “The quality of technology deployed and management in the datacenter can have a strong overbearing on the efficiency of companies in the e-commerce sectors. Since the entire business model of such companies are based on the internet, customers in the sector need to build their IT solutions to face the growing trends of social, mobility, cloud and analytics which will have a significant impact on the workload demands of organizations.

Our past successes with customers in the same space has given us the confidence to launch eMavericks in an effort to support the growing needs of the e-commerce ecosystem. Dell has historically served as not just a technology enabler, but a business enabler for enterprise customers, and we want to carry forward this vision through the program.

Amarinder Singh, Chief Involvement Officer - CIO Association of India said: “Being a CIO in the e-commerce sector is certainly a challenging task with the core functions and customer satisfaction in the sector highly dependent on the effective functioning of IT infrastructure. eMavericks is a first-of-its kind platform for ecommerce players to engage in technology related discussions related to the sector, the fruitfulness of which will be instrumental to their success in the industry at large.”

The launch event saw the participation by online companies such as JustEat, ThinkVidya and Axis Rooms. Dell in association with CAI will strive to enable customers in the sector through regular meet-ups and communication of best practices.