Chip Off The Old Block

An electronics graduate from St Xaviers in Mumbai, Kamlesh Patil was always

good at dismantling electronic equipments. He started his career as a member of

the designing team of an electronics company which specialized in typesetting

machines. This is where he developed his skills in chip-level repairing.

But unable to quell his growing urge to do something on his own, he quit his

cushy job at VSS Computers to start Ockam Infotech in 1990. "I was good at

chip repairing and therefore when I got into the IT industry, I decided not to

dabble into everything, but instead focus on just repairing chips for

computers," reminisces Kamlesh.

This strategy worked well for him and he was kept busy repairing 286 and 386

PCs with his two other employees. He recalls that there were no other players in

the city back then who were offering similar services, which worked to his

benefit.

SERVED BY SERVER



It was eight years later that Kamlesh decided to switch his attention to

another area which was being neglected by most systems integrators at that time–servers.

"Back then awareness of servers was non-existent.

In 1998, Intel recognized the efforts that Ockam was making in the server

space and made it a GID.

HOME SEGMENT PAYS



Till 2000, the company was focused on corporates and the SME segment for

business. "But we saw the growing potential of the home segment as

customers started walking in asking for specific brands," says Kamlesh.

Ockam then opened a retail showroom in Kandivali, a suburb in Mumbai. However

Kamlesh could not give the requisite focus to this outlet, because of the

physical distance involved between his office and this showroom and decided to

shift the outlet closer to his Andheri office.

In addition, he hit upon a novel idea of holding weekend exhibitions at

select localities of the city. This helped generate sales on the basis of

word-of-mouth publicity.

OCKAM’S FORTE



Coming up with innovative sales strategies has kept Ockam in good stead

through the years. It created a CD detailing the need, use, availability and

types of different servers and PCs for different customer segments. "We won

an award from Intel for designing this CD at Shanghai this year," beams

Kamlesh.

Today Ockam offers a vast range of PCs, high-end servers, workstations,

peripherals, consumables, solutions for networking, connectivity and many more.

The company had posted a turnover of Rs 2 crore in 2001-02 and hopes to touch

Rs 3 crore in the current fiscal. "Though this may not look like a big

figure, I am happy that we have been consistently posting profits since the

beginning," says a proud Kamlesh.

VINITA BHATIA in Mumbai