Anil Jagasia CEO

START-UP YEAR: 1986; NO OF PARTNERS: 6,000 BRANCHSTART-UP YEAR: 1988; NO OF PARTNERS: 1,500 BRANCHES: 17 AGENCY OPERATIONS: Samsung, Kobian, HP, Lexmark ADDRESS: 124B Maker Chambers III, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400 021. TEL: 022-22881616  FAX: 022-22041656 WEB SITE: www.savex.org

AGENCY REVENUE (RS Cr) MEASURES THAT MATTERED Changed credit appraisal frequency Strengthened geographical reach

Savex jumped up from its erstwhile position of #10 in the Silver Club with the right combination of a new set of credit monitoring policies and pure business accumen

With a growth of 32%, Savex more than covered up for the 14% negative growth they had during the previous year. It now sits are the #6 slot in the Silver Club, up from #10 position last year. Not just the topline, Savex ensured a strong bottomline growth as well. Says a modest Anil Jagasia, CEO, "Overall, the market was growing and hence we also grew with the market."

During the year, Savex continued its strategy of giving greater focus on the bottomline and hence chose to enhance its presence among the retail community. The only new tie-up that Savex had during the year, was a distribution arrangement for Lexmark printers. Among the product categories, another addition was Samsung's Combo drives.

With Samsung as its main principal, Savex continued to enjoy the status of being a distributor of almost every PC component, barring CPUs and memories. To fill this products category shortfall Savex attempted at picking a CPU vendor during the year, but had to drop the plan, as things did not work out in its favor.

"The market for CPUs was still very volatile and was not a feasible proposition at that time of the year," says Anil. This plan is shelved for at least a couple of year

.Like every year, it conducted its annual "Savex Masti" -- a points-based scheme, in which winners get to visit Sydney in Australia. "We come up with good and interesting locations to take our partners to. In the previous year the trip was to Switzerland. We hope to continue with this promotional program every year," says Anil.

Savex also made conscious effort to strengthen its geographical reach in B, C and D-class cities. Some new branches opened during the year were Guwahati, Surat and Ludhiana. Recently, it added Noida and Jaipur branches to strengthen its presence in the North. Also on the cards are few more branches in the West which includes Nashik. In Mumbai, Savex acquired a larger space of 2000 square feet to facilitate octroi-paid deliveries. "Octroi-paid goods are a new trend in the IT trade. With many vendors beginning to adopt this trend, we can hope to see a growing number of legitimate people in this trade," says Anil.

The highlight of the year was a strategic change in Savex's credit policy monitoring. "We changed our policy of doing credit appraisal from every year to every quarter. This helped us in tracking suspect bad customers before the defaults took place," says Anil. The strict mechanism to monitor credits helped them cleanse most bad debts.

Savex also found efficient and economical ways to make deliveries in the remotest of cities. It also ensured that receivables are taken care in four to five days from these class-cities with minimum of efforts.

The company is aiming for a healthy growth of about 10 to 12% in value terms in the current year. Chances are that Savex will add few more vendors to its kitty by the year-end.

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