Redington eyes marketplace push as cos turn to AI, cloud

While the cloud, managed services biz is still small, it grew the fastest at 53% in Sep quarter

- Gulveen Aulakh

Redington Ltd, India's largest distributor of consumer gadgets, is looking to transform itself into a marketplace platform from a pure-play distribution company, a top executive at the $10-billion company said. The change stems from the sharp growth in its software and cloud segments, as the companies it works with focus more on cloud and AI.

For the next few years, distribution and logistics will remain the mainstay of the company that distributes Apple iPhones, iPads and MacBooks in India; however, the marketplace platform will begin to take shape from 2025 and later become a larger play, group chief executive officer V.S. Hariharan said.

"We're investing a few million dollars on the platform called Cloud Quarks to make it more analytically oriented, and we're also building a marketplace around it with multiple vendors and software, so the resellers can also work with us to gain knowledge of this for their customers. We are working on that, as against pure hardware distribution which will be supply chain logistics driven with credit, warehousing," Hariharan said in an interview.