Vashi Electricals celebrates 40 years of electrifying business service

How often do you meet someone who had a well-paid corporate job, but dared to choose a tougher path and find success and happiness in it? Someone who chose not to spend his time in cozy corporate job, but instead walked into the unknown entrepreneurial area. Today, Madan Dodeja, CEO of Vashi Group, an inspiring individual who has worked passionately towards building the business from scratch to a multi-fold, dynamic electrical distribution business across the country, shares his mantra of success. What's new at Vashi Electricals? As you know, Vashi Electricals is India's largest channel partner of reputed International brands of Industrial Electrical products. For us, 2018 is a year of celebration as we mark 40 successful and delightful customer service to industrial customers. In today's competitive business environment this is a happy achievement, so to celebrate, we have planned long year celebration activities for our loyal and committed customers, stakeholders, staff - some who've been employed for over 30 years. To say, Vashi Electricals is more than just an electrical channel partner. We are a company of procurement specialists helping customers to lower supply chain cost and increase in efficiency. We provide basket of products under one roof to meet project or emergency maintenance requirements under one roof. We have recently started our ecommerce portal and that has seen major traction across industries and geographies. Could you tell us about your company, objectives, achievements and core competencies? Our success mantra is customer oriented. Our core purpose is to provide World Class Solutions to our believers through Innovative systems and processes. We aspire to delight our customers by performing better than their expectations. Our state-of ûthe-art  2 lakh sq.ft. mother warehouse at Bhiwandi  has more than 20,000 different products being stocked to cater the diversified needs of the customers on time. SAP ERP Software, systems, processes and ecommerce portal are the backbone of our organisation. Our commitment 700 workforce is proud of its glorious past, but the team believes that it has a future which will extend beyond their lifetime. Which are the leading products, brands & solutions you offer? Vashi Electricals majorly sells industrial electrical products such as Siemens Switchgears, Legrand MCB's, ABB switchgear and Automation Components, Bonfiglioli Geared Motors, Siemens Motors, Hindustan Motors, Panasonic Compact AC Geared Motors, Finolex Wires & Cables, Polycab Wires & Cables, Philips Lighting, SKF Bearings, Omron Industrial Automation, Connectwell Terminal Blocks, Elmeasure Digital Panel Meters, Continental V-Belt, Castrol Industrial Lubricants & Sapphire Automation Scada Solutions. Under services, we have an in-house service station to help Industrial customers repair their gearboxes and motors. All our service engineers are certified by the brands and adhere to premium quality. We have four service stations at Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon and Bangalore to help our Industrial Customers, just a call away. An industrial customer can also enter into rate contract with us and procure the items with us, without worrying about the constant price fluctuations. What's your growth strategy for the medium and long term in the electrical supplies segment? We aim to have our presence in every industrial town in India in next three years. We must be in a position to meet the requirement of the customers in these Industrial towns within 24 hours in any part of the India. The e-commerce portal is one step towards that diversified business portfolio to cater demands o customers at ease. How was the FY 2016-17 in terms of business achieved, operating profit and new initiatives launched? A lot has happened in the last year. Demonetisation, Goods and Services Tax (GST) Implementation, new export laws & compliances has opened new doors to the organised players like us. After GST, we have seen phenomenal rise in the customers. That is the indication that lot of people now wants to work with organised players and trusted ones in the industry. Just to put rough numbers in perspective, our sales grew by 11 to 15% & our EBITA by 11% for the last Financial year. Tell us about verticals and geographies you are catering to and your major clientele? We are present in 38 locations, PAN India. Our regional offices, on-ground workforce and relationship managers work with our customers closely and are just a call away for their queries. The major client base is the OEM's, panel builders, industrial end-user market and project requirements. What challenge do you foresee in the current year? Credit management and inventory planning are the biggest challenge and continue to be a main pain-point. However, through swift planning & stringent processes, these challenges can be overcome. What is the way forward for stakeholders to boost sector growth? <ul> <li>The industrial electrical product market in last three years and business scenario in particular has gone through a dramatic transformation. The challenging economic scenario coupled with high capacity build up by major manufacturers has made the market very demanding.</li> <li>Vashi Electricals and Associates have served the market in the last 40 years with innovative processes which are a customer delight and hence are always a customer preferred choice.</li> <li>Consistent and standardised front and back end processes enable us espouse our brand value. This ensures delivery of value in customer purchase experience and thereby customer satisfaction.</li> <li>Manufactures must look at their distributors as partners and not customers. Focus should move from primary sales to secondary sales. Stronger collaboration between manufacturer and channel will result in better solution to the customer. </li> <li>Adopting new technologies and implementing with them with the business processes for customer delight, customer ease of business will continue to be our main agenda. </li></ul> Would you like to say anything as we wrap up? Yes - we will be participating in Elecrama and I invite you and all your readers to join in to our celebration. Stay tuned for the surprise and celebration to come.