9 PRIYA LTD:Surge From Hinterland

South was a major market for Priya in 1999-2000 with sales of Rs 49 crore, followed by the northern region with Rs 28 crore. But what surprised the promoters of Priya was that unlike previous years, most of the sales came from small towns instead of the ubiquitous cities. If in the western region, cities like Kota and Nasik contributed to the growth, in the eastern region Jhansi and Bareilly did the job. Among the four regions, sales have been uniform till date.

In 1999-2000, Priya Ltd had eight offices with the headquarters in Mumbai. Today the company has already established eight more offices and four more will be set up by the year-end, which will bring the count to 20 offices throughout the country.

Priya’s turnover for 1999-2000 was Rs 146 crore. Of this local sales accounted for Rs 118 crore while exports covered the rest. This year the company is projecting figure of Rs 300

crore.

Going by the revenue of first two quarters of this year -- Rs 68 crore came in the AMJ quarter and Rs 77 crore in the JAS quarter–Priya seem to be well on track of achieving the set target. Priya initially had high hopes for the Q3 but with the ongoing shortage of Seagate hard disk drives, the company might fall short of its projections for the current fiscal.

Distributing Seagate HDDs and LG monitors are the main revenue grossers contributing almost 25 percent each to the total sales. Priya also distributes other products from LG Electronics, GVC, Accton, and Cybee. This year they have already tied up with Edimax and

Traxdata.

Priya will soon tie up with VIA too for distribution of Cyrix processors in the country. Priya was a distributor for Cyrix processor an year ago, when it was still the property of National Semiconductor.

The highlight of 1999-2000 was the launch of Priya’s own brand of mice, speakers and modems. All these products are sourced from Taiwan and are being sold under the brand name of Priya in India. Currently Priya is going easy on their own brand, as they are concentrating more on other well-known brands. As of now, the brand Priya is yet to prove as a main earner for the company.

Priya had 1,000 channel partners in 1999 and this year they have signed over 1,000 more. However, the company is clear that it does not want to expand faster than this pace, as they feel that support to partners might get diluted.

For the current year, Priya will concentrate on providing support centers at as many places as possible. This will include those places where they do not have a presence. In a bid to provide better support to their channels, Priya has automated their processes and networked all their offices. A call center will also be set up at Mumbai and Bangalore for this purpose.

Unlike most companies, Priya has no plans to set up an e-commerce site. The existing site

www.priyagroup.com offers just online support. The reason for shying away from an e-com presence is the fear that handling of products in transit could lead to unwanted complications.