Nehru Place is familiar with many a computer savvy Delhiite. South Delhi's biggest commercial centre cum office area cum shopping plaza, Nehru Place complex is spread over an area of 2 kms and rises to over 7 storeyed buildings. It houses the offices of Microsoft, Punj Lloyds, ABC Consultants, Apollo tyres, BPL Ltd., Cisco Systems, Great Shipping Corporation, Hughes Software etc. to name a few.

Composed of the high rise buildings, the latest amongst the architecture are those of the Nehru Place Hotels better known as the Park Royale Hotel, Microsoft office building , Paharpur Business Centre and the International Trade Tower. Among the relatively older counterparts are the Chiranjiv Towers, Hemkunt Tower and Chamber, Shakuntla, Skipper House, Paras Cinema Hall and about a hundred more buildings and chambers.

Steering the capital city to the cyber age, Nehru Place boasts of the largest computer hardware and software market in the city. There are umpteen number of shops and computer service centres feeding in the cyber operations, software and hardware requirements of the city. Major suppliers publish the fluctuating market prices of the computers - branded and assembled and the computer parts separately. Avijit of Alsun Systems operating from a cramped shop in Skylark building with an assembling unit in nearby Kalkaji , informs, "We survive on wholesale market requirements for hardware. Most of our customers are from the corporate offices who go in for the branded systems. We also supply hardware to smaller companies and offices who generally go in for the assembled ones. Being the wholesale dealers in the branded and assembled computer products, we are able to offer the best prices to our customers."

Being close to most of the computer hardware manufacturing units of the city like the Software Technology Park at NOIDA and other manufacturing units at Okhla, the computer market here is able to offer the best of the prices to the bulk buyers and also the individual buyers. The pricing is said to be one of the lowest in the country. The market has become convenient for the low budget computer savvy generation of the city. The computer service centres here offer installation, trouble shooting and periodic Annual Maintenance Contracts at one of the best possible prices. But the best recommend buys are from the shops in the basements and the ones in the unexpected obscure corners of some higher floors as they are the ones who offer the best rates (provided you know the chipset- if it is really an intel inside!)

Like any other market there will be enough shopkeepers to con a novice. But the prices are often of the wholesale market level and the individual buyers save a lot of money if they can have the best of the individual components assembled rather than buying from a well maintained shop in the main market. And it is no surprise to watch youngsters carry away computer monitors, CPUs and other hardware in their arms and lug them onto their two-wheelers and autorickshaws. There are stacks of cheap blank CDs and there are small shops in the dingy corners making networking cables with performance equivalent to those of a branded one . All being offered to almost half the prices that you would pay at a branded shop or in a posh market. The gaurantee offered here on the product is though personal but by experience of most of the customers from this Mecca of computers, ethics and after- sales service concepts do hold water here!oftwares, the market offers one of the best one-stop shopping facility. In spite of the beautifully architectured Microsoft office in the heart of the complex, Nehru Place has also earned its controversial disrepute in the software grey market. Curbed by the more than often raids on the sellers and the buyers by NASSCOM officials, the computer software grey market has been flourishing in Nehru Place.

In front of the Skylark and the Computer Plaza buildings, their are roadside sellers of software CDs as low as Rs. 20 ( if that rings a bell - they are not pirated but are the ones offered free with computers magazines). And at that cost a Delhiite gets the latest Internet Explorer version release or the Java software and tutorial or the latest CD of games at a throw-away price.