SME

Consolidating a 3 Decade-long Business Legacy

by VARINDIA 2010-06-21

Trace the early days of the Lalani Group?

The Lalani Group, which was established way back in 1978, functions in four segments, namely retail, distribution, enterprise and education. In the distribution segment, we are the registered distributors of 7-8 companies. Our supply network encompasses the whole of Eastern India, having branches in almost all the states. In total, we have eight branches. Besides serving customers in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa and Assam, we are also operational in Jaipur, Delhi and Mumbai, though on a small scale. For those places where we do not have our branches, we are operational through our franchisees. As for the enterprise segment, we have a direct marketing team which caters to the government and the corporate segment. We are also directly in touch with the end-users and keep a regular check on the quality of the products that we deliver.

In the education segment, we are running a training institute by the name of Lalani Computer Academy, where we train people for the hardware industry. The need for a hardware training institute was felt in 1994, when the lack in the number of hardware professionals was getting difficult for us to carry on our business. It was then when we came up with the idea of opening such an institute.

What is the total manpower of your organization? What is your company's turnover?

We have a team of around 270 people. With the expansion of our business to various parts of the country, the number is gradually increasing, We have 700–800 regular resellers working under us, spread across the whole of eastern part of the country. As for our annual turnover, we are a Rs.190-crore company, with the major chunk coming from the distribution segment. While 60 per cent of our business is derived from the distribution space, 15 per cent comes from the retail segment and the rest from the enterprise and the education segment.

Who are your customers? Which are the products you deal in?

Our company caters to the needs of the IT sector, SMEs, corporates, government, end- users, dealers and resellers. We deal in almost all of the office automation products, starting from enterprise and consumer products like TFT monitors, printers, keyboards, copiers, cabinets, headphones, speakers, web cameras, UPS, pen drives and scanners, as well as telecom products like Fax machines, Fax spare parts and Film Ribbons. We are associated with all the big names like HP, AOC, ZyXel, Panasonic, LG, Sony, Canon, ASUS, Wipro, Transcend, Acer, Seagate and Western Digital.

What kind of targets have you set for the next 6-12 months?

We are looking at expanding our business to Southern India within this year, which will comprise of Chennai and Bangalore. We have set ourselves a target of 30% growth, which we hope to achieve in a year’s time. We are also expanding our reseller network, exceeding the current number, which is around 700-800.