Chip Off The Old Block

An electronics graduate from St Xaviers in Mumbai, Kamlesh Patil was always
good at dismantling electronic equipments. He started his career as a member of
the designing team of an electronics company which specialized in typesetting
machines. This is where he developed his skills in chip-level repairing.

But unable to quell his growing urge to do something on his own, he quit his
cushy job at VSS Computers to start Ockam Infotech in 1990. "I was good at
chip repairing and therefore when I got into the IT industry, I decided not to
dabble into everything, but instead focus on just repairing chips for
computers," reminisces Kamlesh.

This strategy worked well for him and he was kept busy repairing 286 and 386
PCs with his two other employees. He recalls that there were no other players in
the city back then who were offering similar services, which worked to his
benefit.

SERVED BY SERVER

It was eight years later that Kamlesh decided to switch his attention to
another area which was being neglected by most systems integrators at that time–servers.
"Back then awareness of servers was non-existent.

In 1998, Intel recognized the efforts that Ockam was making in the server
space and made it a GID.

HOME SEGMENT PAYS

Till 2000, the company was focused on corporates and the SME segment for
business. "But we saw the growing potential of the home segment as
customers started walking in asking for specific brands," says Kamlesh.

Ockam then opened a retail showroom in Kandivali, a suburb in Mumbai. However
Kamlesh could not give the requisite focus to this outlet, because of the
physical distance involved between his office and this showroom and decided to
shift the outlet closer to his Andheri office.

In addition, he hit upon a novel idea of holding weekend exhibitions at
select localities of the city. This helped generate sales on the basis of
word-of-mouth publicity.

OCKAM’S FORTE

Coming up with innovative sales strategies has kept Ockam in good stead
through the years. It created a CD detailing the need, use, availability and
types of different servers and PCs for different customer segments. "We won
an award from Intel for designing this CD at Shanghai this year," beams
Kamlesh.

Today Ockam offers a vast range of PCs, high-end servers, workstations,
peripherals, consumables, solutions for networking, connectivity and many more.

The company had posted a turnover of Rs 2 crore in 2001-02 and hopes to touch
Rs 3 crore in the current fiscal. "Though this may not look like a big
figure, I am happy that we have been consistently posting profits since the
beginning," says a proud Kamlesh.

VINITA BHATIA in Mumbai