Providing Tests Measurements Equipments: Ajay Gulati, Electro Rent

Electro Rent is a distributor of tests measurements equipments across the various sectors. They lease out the equipments and also give advice about the quality, usage and upgradation of these eqipments.  Ajay Gulati, Senior VP, Sales and  business Development, discusses some aspects of his organisation.

Brief detail about Electro Rent

With over 54 years of experience in advising customers on their best acquisition approach, by providing rent, purchase, and leasing options that best fit their needs. In India, the firm is operating since a decade from their offices in Gurgaon-NCR and Bangalore. With the merger of Microlease and Electro Rent’s business operations, Electro Rent is a world leader in smart solutions for test equipment.

What exactly electro rent is doing in Power and measurement Industry?

Basically, we provide testing equipment which either used for product design phase or then moves to conformance and validation testing so it could be traditional power sector application or it  could the emerging sustainable energy solution for example solar or electronic.

Do you see more prospects in Power and energy?

Definitely, It is one area but we are not restricted to one sector as there are other sectors as well  like automotive, aerospace and Defense.

  Which are your core areas?

Our core areas are Telecom, RF Microwave and Semiconductors, Aerospace and Defense and  Automotive Electronics.

How does Electro Rent works?

So the renting model of tests measurements works as per the requirement of our customer and availability of the  equipment as well. People take it for 6 months or for 12 months etc. Occasionally somebody wants  it for a week because the equipments are expensive. We got major inventory basis from the US, UK,  Malaysia, China, India etc and we ship the equipment all over the world.

We are a one-stop-shop for tests measurements requirements. Our customers vary from  really big bodies. We are renting to various sectors, such as Aerospace/Defense, Mobile/Computing  including 5G, LTE, LTE-Advanced, Semiconductor Based Companies, Power & Industrial, Automotive  Electronics, Medical Electronics, Education and Research, New Space, Data Products, IOT  Companies and Sub Contractors.

 Are you using a distributor network?

No, we don’t have a distributor network. We are doing direct sales as we have our sales team at  both the offices and also, we are using some of the marketing channels to reach out to our  customers. We are the renting partners for tests measurements equipments of principal vendors.

We have more than 1 lakhs assets in our inventory globally, 8000 products category and more  than 300 brands. To manage the scale of inventory we have strong in house IT Solutions because we  realise the importance of it. We need to make sure that the equipment is ready to shape and their  repair downtime is minimal and they have a different configuration. With the experience, we have developed an asset management solution that we offer to our   customers.

What type of clients you have in India?

We have clients across various sectors. Let’s start with telecom, Telecom at top of the value  chain or the ecosystem is telecom operators and also there are the network equipment providers  and then we have the subcontractors of the service companies who are doing most of the  installation and maintenance for the networks that the operators are deploying. Most of them  across the ecosystem are our customers in India.

In other sectors like in RF and Semiconductor, Microwave, R&D companies, R&D labs which are  engaged in new product development, engineering services companies who are doing product  validations for some of the product OEM companies they happen to be our customers.  We also have customers in Manufacturing, some of the cable and antenna manufacturers are our  customers and we have customers in Handset and contract manufacturing it’s a new segment  emerged in India in the last couple of years. Apart from these, Automotive Industry is one of major  costumers.

  Apart from advice what do you provide to your aggregator?

We are providing the tests measurements equipment primarily and there is some bit of technical support which is  limited to the usage of the equipment by our customers. We are not supplying resources or testing  resources nor are we doing testing.

What are the  opportunities in India for Electro rent?

Fiber deployment, 5G, smart cities, IoT, Manufacturing, Data Centre is the areas in which we see  our future growth in. We acquired a US-based company Rush Computers, now a part of Electro  Rent. They focus on a product line which is particularly IT & data centers.

What are the challenges?

There are always challenges without a doubt. I think, finding out a good talent is the first and  foremost challenge in the out sector. We are finding those multitalented people who can help our  customers to make the right decision. Another complex is import, Export, Bureaucracy, regulations,  customs and India has made a lot of good progress in recent years to reduce all of that and we are  hoping that the progress continues.

 Why would people come to Electro Rent instead of directly going to the principal  companies?

There are various reasons. Now there is a change in trends, technology cycle is becoming short   such as 2G, 3G, 4G and now we are moving to 5G and this is happening in every sector and  accelerating. So the product's life cycle is also shorter and then people are not sure about the long  term process. Hence people are moving towards models like renting.