It’s All In The Family

When W L Thakur founded Vishal Enterprises in 1986, little did he expect that it would be Sarika, his daughter-in-law’s sister, who would build it up into a profitable business! At the time, Sarika herself had no plans of entering a field that was little known, one moreover, that few women players. Once she took over the reins of the business, however, she decided to give it all that she had and make it the success story that it is today.

After Thakur’s death in 1991, Sarika took over the reins of Vishal Enterprises. Since both her husband, Narayan Chodhri, and her brother-in-law, Milind Thakur, were salaried employees then, the mantle of running the business fell on the shoulders of the 28-year old Sarika. An arts graduate, she became actively involved in the day-to-day activities of the business and continues to do the same even now.

Growth of the business

When Sarika took over in 1991, the business was grossing a little over Rs 15 lakh. With sheer hard work and determination, she managed to improve sales and in 1998-99 the company posted a turnover of Rs 79 lakh. However in December 1999, Sarika suffered a fall and injured her hip. During her absence the business suffered a bit and the revenue came down to Rs 70 lakh.

It was during this period that Milind Thakur, her brother-in-law, started managing the business. He started pitching for more and more corporate customers. So, while Sarika looked after back-end office functions, Milind became the front-office of the company.

Focusing on consumables

A couple of years ago, Sarika and Milind jointly decided to focus on the consumables segment. The company was earlier also distributing Siemens Nixdorf PCs and servers. They soon realized that their core competency was in being mere box pushers. Says Sarika, “In hardware, there are many players. The return on investment is consequently very low.”

This is partly the reason why the company shifted its focus from the hardware to the consumables market. Says Milind, “Since its inception, Vishal Enterprises has been dealing in consumables like DLTs, blank CDs, data cartridges and floppy disks. However, it is only now that this has become our focus area.” They are currently trying to create a brand image for Fuji, a new entrant in the data storage products market in the country.

But this does not mean that the organization will turn away from established brands like Sony and 3M. “If our customers demand Sony, then we will provide them with Sony. But we will also try to push Fuji as much as possible,” says Milind.

Corporate is the way to go

Sarika and Milind are both very firm on their choice of customers. Not wanting to deal with the volatile SOHO market, they have decided to cater only to the corporates. Today their list of clients runs long with names like Siemens, CitiCorp, Larsen & Toubro and Enron amongst others.

Sarika feels that to make a dent in the SOHO market, one needs to have a proper retail outlet. Also, while addressing this market, a lot of publicity and advertising strategies have to be worked out by the dealers. This says Milind, eats into their profit margin. “Even the volumes of the sales are not very encouraging,” concedes Milind.

Working with corporates on the other hand has turned out to be a fruitful and profitable experience. Both feel that corporates customers being large buyers, the transaction translates into bigger volumes and therefore bigger profits. “Unlike the home segment, corporate customers are very quality and cost-sensitive. They want the best quality products at the most competitive prices,” opines Sarika.

The moot issue is that once the corporate buys from a reliable dealer who gives him good service, they remain loyal customers. “This way we can be assured of repeated sales from our corporate customers,” says Milind. But they both agree that the reason they have been able to retain all their customers is largely because of their service quotient.

Buoyed by the company’s success, Sarika’s husband has also quit his job and is doing his bit to help in the smooth functioning of the company in Sarika’s absence. Following her accident, Sarika is still under treatment and is recuperating in Pune. But she is optimistic that she will be back on her feet within a month, ready to take on all comers.