10. Bottomline: Is What Matters

The #10 member of the DQCI Silver Club, Savex Computers felt that there was nothing that could stop the slowdown at least in 2001-02. With a revenue of Rs 167 crore in 2001-02, Savex saw a negative growth of 14 percent over the previous fiscal when it had touched Rs 195 crore.

Savex was one company which did not make any major attempts to increase its revenue. The idea was to focus only on the bottomline and to go with market's pace. Anil Jagasia, MD, firmly believes that any attempt to beat the slowdown would not have helped. "Swimming against the tide is not our policy. And so we did not target topline at the cost of our bottomline," says he.

According to Anil, the only good thing that happened to the industry during the slowdown was the correction done in credit terms by distributors. "It was a healthy move," says Anil.

During the year, Savex focused more on the home segment rather than on government or corporate market. "The government is broke and has very long credit cycles, and corporates are not buying at the moment," remarks he.

The distributor has been increasing focus on smaller towns. Presently, it has seven branch offices in C and D-class cities of Maharashtra and five branches in Gujarat. It hopes to add a couple of branches in the North and South regions too.

According to Anil, these regions have high potential for growth, largely because of Internet penetration. As far as logistics in C and D-cities were concerned, Savex made use of the government-controlled small parcel service and private couriers for deliveries in the regions.

I

n the IT trading community, Savex retained its synonymity with Samsung, due to its long association as a distributor for most of the latter's products. "The distribution arrangement with Mercury for motherboards and cabinets also showed substantial growth in the last quarter of the year," says Anil.

MEASURES THAT BROUGHT MOOLAH: Focused on bottomline than on topline Explored high-growth C and D-class cities

Except for CPUs and memory modules, Savex's portfolio today has all the components required for building a basic PC. And Savex soon hopes to finalize on choosing one CPU and memory vendor each.

From a modest beginning as a PC retailing and peripheral distribution company in 1986, Savex has come a long way. Today, Savex ensures that its second tier channel members are protected by limiting the numbers of its channel members in a designated region. Having over 14 offices throughout India, Savex ensures all parts of the country are serviced for hardware requirements.

Professional management of inventory and an efficiently controlled credit policy have ensured healthier bottomline for
Savex.

An efficient MIS system, based on a ERP software solution, provides instant information on inventory, accounts receivables and other crucial information like monitoring of credit at all its branches.