Prianto goes Dutch as part of Euro expansion plans

One-year-old UK firm opens Benelux office and eyes more territories to capitalise on dwindling independent distie ranks

A year after launching in the UK, virtualistion "knowledge distributor" Prianto is jumping into the Benelux region and planning further expansion towards the north and east.

Prianto was founded in the UK in August 2011 by former Centia and Arrow exec Yuri Pasea, with the venture partly backed by a German company of the same name. The new office in Benelux will be part of the wider group, but Pasea told ChannelWeb he has "stuck my hand in my pocket again" to invest in the nascent business.

"The impetus [for the Benelux launch] is what is happening in the distribution market in the past year, with the acquisitions of Magirus and SDG; there will come a point when all the independent distributors focused on virtualisation will be gone," he added.

Running the new operation will be experienced distribution duo Rashied Akrum and Carina Rozendaal. The first franchise on the books will be new UK partner, private cloud management vendor Embotics.

In addition to the German and UK operations, Prianto also runs offices in Switzerland and Austria. Pasea indicated that the distributor would look to further widen its footprint in the coming months, with Scandinavia and eastern Europe areas being considered.

"We want to be a pan-European player and, to do that, we need to be in at least nine or 10 countries," he explained.

The watchword for the UK business during its second year in existence will be investment in staff, said Pasea (pictured), with additions to the internal sales team to be made in the coming weeks.

"People often say that in your first year you lose money, in your second you break even and in your third you make a profit. We seem to have managed to compress all three years into one," he added. "We want to organically grow the business."