Working for Collective Advancement of Association Members

Vasudevan R, President, CONFED-ITA talked about empowering the partners associated with the association

- SWAMINATHAN B

Can you provide an overview of CONFED-ITA and its main objectives?

Welfare of all our members is primary to us. Our goal is to find solutions for overcoming the business loss due to more online purchases by end users and to accommodate the business according to them are the main objectives.

CONFED-ITA was started in 2006 and the main reason behind it was Microsoft and their raid. Can you elaborate it in detail?

Microsoft were conducting raid on almost all of us, as mostly the entire market was full of counterfeit softwares. The original cost of Microsoft was only around Rs 16,000/-, but they were billing us more than Rs 1 lakh after raid as fine. To overcome this, Bloom Electronics Karthikeyan formed a team of 7 associations to fight it back and to safeguard the members. Subsequently Microsoft came down for discussion, reduced their raids, suggested us to sell through vendors. In fact, Microsoft’s raid was a spark for this fire. We were only a 350 members’ association in the beginning, but today we are a 1800 + members comprising of several associations.

With 28 associations under its umbrella, how does CONFEDITA ensure unity and effective collaboration among its members?