For Apcom, it has been the year of realignment of its multiple vendor practices. It dissociated itself from carrying multi-vendor products in the LAN segment and only carried the Dax range of products. It may be recalled that Apcom, which has been in the networking industry since 1988, was pushing Compex till the FY 1999-00, which it made a de facto standard in NICs. And the decision to promote Dax was a demanding task.

Today, it is Dax all the way for Apcom in modems, NICs, hubs and switches; Eicon for routers and ISDN modems; Specialix for RAS and I/O solutions; and Nordx for cabling market. Dax alone accounted for Rs 36.20 crore of revenue, of the total revenue of Rs 52.50 crore from networking. The rest coming from Eicon, Specialix, and Nordx. En route, Apcom succeeded in making Dax the third largest selling brand in the country in three categories—dial-up modem, NICs and hubs with a total sales revenue of Rs 25 crore, Rs 7.5 crore and Rs 2.78 crore, respectively. For Eicon with a sales revenue of Rs 8.07 crore, made it the fourth largest brand of routers.

The single reason for Apcom’s success, if signaled out, is its consolidation on technical expertise, its value addition to the distribution process and its creativity in promoting a solution. Now with Dax, its own brand getting widely accepted, this year could be a landmark for Apcom and Dax.