Hannover Milano Fairs, which will hold the world’s largest IT trade exhibition, CeBIT, for the first time in India later this year, says buyers from wide geographies such as Asia Pacific, South Asia and the Gulf region have shown interest in the fair.
CeBIT will be held in Bangalore on November 12-14.
“The quantum of interest in procuring from India soon after we announced the debut of CeBIT in Bangalore at the CeBIT Hannover 2014 fair earlier this March has convinced us to position India as a major procurement hub for IT products and services for those regions,” Mehul Lanvers-Shah, Managing Director, Hannover Milano Fairs India, told
Companies located in Japan, Finland, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, the US and the UK are keen on procuring technology products, ranging from security software,web and mobile solutions to gaming and education software from CeBIT India. The show is likely to witness the participation of 600 exhibitors (domestic and international) and 25,000-30,000 buyers, of whom 15 per cent are expected from around the world.
More importantly, Shah expects the total transactional value per visitor at the fair to significantly exceed €106,000 (around ₹87 lakh), same as the total transactional value per visitor recorded at the CeBIT Hannover fair held in March 2013. “India is home to 5,000 plus large enterprises and some 400,000 small and medium businesses. Compare this with the 200,000 buyers at CeBIT Hannover 2014 and you can see that the sheer volumes of buyers in India will drive the transactional value much higher than €1,06,000,” Shah said.
Currently, Indian buyers visit GITEX Dubai, the ICT business gateway to West Asia; Communicasia Singapore, the ICT event for the South Asian region; and Computex Taiwan, another trade show, for most of their hardware and software requirements. “We would like to make India the procurement hub for IT products and services not just for domestic buyers, but regional buyers from the Asia Pacific and Japan, SAARC and GCC countries to start with,” said Shah.