From: Yogesh Pathak
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: O'Reilly should expand in India
Tim,
I have been an ORA fan for the last few years. While browsing one of your books I realized that you have offices in Cambridge, Koln, Sebastopol, Paris, and Tokyo. Considering that India has a very large software developer pool, it may be a good idea for ORA to start a division in India, with affordable pricing in local terms (rather than a plain $-Re translated price). This could be a win-win situation for ORA and the Indian software community.
Regards,
yogesh
I'll let Ron Tomich, head of Asian Sales, take this one.
Dear Yogesh,
Thank you for your comments. Tim asked me to answer your question as I am responsible for our activities in India.
As you must be aware, we now have distribution in India via Computer Bookshop. While we actually do pretty good business in India, we are aware that a large portion of our potential readers simply cannot afford our books due to the rate of exchange. We have been studying this situation, and are considering a trial program for reprinting a few titles locally sometime within this year. We obviously would like to grow our market in India, and make our books more affordable for our customers there. We'd also like to establish a local office there at some point, though that is probably at least a year or two away. I toured India a few months ago and was amazed at the level of work taking place, and I could definitely see how O'Reilly could benefit from having a local presense. Its an idea that will be on my list of considerations for 1999.
Sincerely,
Ron Tomich
