18. Mediaman Infotech Bitten By Retail Bug

MD: Dushyant Mehta START-UP YEAR: 1987 NO OF PARTNERS: 6,000  BRANCHES: 8 PRODUCTS: Systems, peripherals, hardware and software. ADDRESS: 2nd Floor, Vidyarthi Bhavan, Tribhuvan Road, Near Dreamland Cinema, Mumbai-400004 TEL: 3823100/3200/3300 FAX: 3877418 WEB SITE: www.mediamangroup.com POINTERS TO PERFORMANCE Launched own range of 'Bravish' products  Tied up with AMD for selling its processors POINTERS TO FUTURE To offer a gamut of brands instead of a single one To add mass-market products to portfolio

Dushyant Mehta, Chairman and CEO, Mediaman Infotech is unlikely to forget the year 2000. This was the year he took the plunge into two new business areas -- retailing and launching his own brand 'Bravish'. The company also tied up with a European company for providing NAS solutions to its customers.

Already the response for Bravish products has been encouraging, given the fact that the prices for the products are almost 35 percent lower than those of other established brands. Mediaman also offers a lifetime warranty for Bravish products which has gone down well both with the channels as well as the end-customers.

The company tied up with AMD for selling its processors in mid-2000. Starting at a modest sale of 1000 CPUs monthly, it has now progressed to 2000-3000

units.

The company's revenues for 1990-00 were Rs 87 crore. Of this Rs 75.3 crore came from agency business, while services and systems integration contributed the remaining. But in 2000-01, the company decided to concentrate only on its agency business and the turnover for the year was Rs 112 crore. Mediaman managed to grow by 48.66 percent in a year that was marked by the economic slowdown. Products like memories, HDDs, internal modems and peripherals were some of the main propellers of this progress.

According to Dushyant, this growth has largely been the result of offering an entire spectrum of products and solutions rather than sticking to a single brand.

The company is now gearing up to add more mass-market products and brands to its portfolio by this year-end. Though Dushyant is loathe to mention the names at this stage, he states that talks are underway with an US-based motherboard MNC. Unlike most distributors, he is at ease with Western vendors than their Taiwanese counterparts, because he feels the former offer better marketing and product support. "I would rather bank my money on the West than the East," he says.



Seeing the retail culture abroad excited him enough to start his very own chain of retail outlets under the name 'Here & Now' in 2000. This venture contributes 20 percent to his overall business, while distribution and solution-providing chips in the remaining 50 and 30 percent respectively. Till date retail outlets have been set up only in Mumbai. However, Dushyant reveals that more stores will be added throughout the country in the next few years. He reasons that these retail outlets will also catapult the sales of
Bravish.

This year the company, which is ranked 19th in the silver club as compared to 15th last year, is working on providing complete data storage solutions for the SME segment. It will also concentrate on offering Bravish memories in mid and high-end segments.