A. Grover : Driven by Obsession

After completing his graduation in mechanical engineering from Delhi University in 1978, Ashok Grover, MD, Groovy Communications joined, Delhi Cloth Mill (DCM) as a trainee engineer. He also tried his hand in photocopier business at confidential documents copier, but after a short stint of one and half years, he realized that his passion lay elsewhere. He realized that he was obsessed with IT and he found it as one of the most promising and budding fields. After gaining experience and securing a good understanding of sales, purchases, imports and the like, he began thinking of starting his own venture.

THE BEGINNING

Turning his dreams into reality, Grover started his career in IT in 1987 with Godrej, which manufactured dot-matrix printers, as a business partner. Then after 2 years, it further strengthened his dealership base by adding Sterling computers for marketing SIVA brand of PCs, with the help of local advertising in newspapers. It rapidly became second best dealer in 2 years time. But the actual business picked up for the company in the year 1993, when companies like HP made its entry into India and tied up with Godrej. Groovy was again one of the first to market their products, mainly peripherals like Laserjets, Inkjets and dot-matrix printers. Later, when HP started marketing PCs through open channel in the year 1997, Groovy was among the first to be directly associated with HP in the same year. Currently, Groovy offers a complete range of HP products, ie servers, PCs, plotters, printers, scanners and even became HP service providers.

RECOGNITION

For its sheer dedication and loyalty, HP has honored Groovy Communications with several accreditation like one of the first direct premium support providers (DPSP) and accredited resellers (ACR). Additionally, it has been recognized as the preferred peripheral vendor as a part of LaserJet champion program and were adjudged the accredited registered supplies reseller (RSR) for the consumables. According to Grover, "With a large base of satisfied customers, we can proudly look back to the significant milestones that we achieved in our more than a decades journey. "

CURRENT BUSINESS

In the last 20 years, Groovy Communications has grown by leaps and bounds. Today, the company enjoys 20 years old partnership with single brand ie HP as a platinum premier partner. It deals in all types of HP printers including HP multifunction printers, network printers, large format printers and plotters. It deals directly with large corporate orders located in Delhi and NCR. Moreover, it provides good after sales service to its customers.

Presently, Groovy is a `15 crore turnover company, having 40% market share across northern region in plotters. Essentially, it caters largely to sales and manage large format printers and network printing. Wherein the sale of Inkjet, Laserjet and MFPs happens through its own retail showroom located in Nehru Place. It sells on an average 100 large format printers to corporates and 350 plotters yearly. "Since we deal with large telecom and hospitals, we ensure to provide our after-sales services around the clock, without any downtime," said Grover.

CHALLENGES

Every business is prone to risks, so is for Groovy. When the company was in its full glory, it had touched a highest turnover of `25 crore in the year 1996. But with growing business, the company started facing setbacks. While remembering the difficult days, Grover said, "During the great years of our business, we were growing significantly. But channel is dangerous. We were duped to the tune of

`25 lakh. That was the day, when we decided to move out of channel business and started selling directly to end-customers."

Grover sees IT as the most dynamic business. "Today, we can't afford to rest on our past laurels. We have to be always on our own toss and keep learning new technologies like cloud computing and focus on IT penetration in rural areas. Therefore, we are rolling up our sleeves to enter into new business."

FUTURE GOAL

In addition to printing solutions, the company has recently partnered with HP for enterprise storage, servers and networking (ESSN). "The rationale to diversify into server, storage and networking business is that we see a huge growth in this space. Many times, our printing customer asked about storage, so we will compliment the ESSN business with our current business, and expand our platter," Grover said.

Grover has three sons. His elder son Kunal Grover has already joined family business 5 years ago. Very soon his second son is also joining his father business. "My leadership mantra is to focus on having a happy and productive workforce using vision, respect, motivation and connectedness, and to leverage the collective genius toward shared goals," concluded Grover.