On The Right Path

It was a year full of activities  for OA Compserve as the company saw
its bottomline surging to 18%, the best in the last three years. The man behind
this growth is a veteran in the channel space RK Malhotra. He continued focusing
on four verticals that include defense, railways, education and power. The
company got some major projects in the defense sector with the support from its
vendors and managed to clinch some major deals.

The OA group clocked revenue to the tune of Rs 67 crore in 2003-04 as against
Rs 57 crore in 2002-03. The growth mantra for this year would be to concentrate
on newer segments that include routers, switches, storage, Wi-Fi and servers.

GROUP EFFORTS

OA Compserve started its operations in 1990 and as the business expanded,
the company started two more divisions Silicon Comnet and Renovision Comnet. The
former looks after networking business and the latter is into consumables.

VENDOR SUPPORT

After 15 years of operation, OA group has reached a stage where vendors
approach them to handle big projects. Companies like IBM, Cisco and HP are to
name a few, have been associated with the group for more than a decade. "I
am very pleased with the kind of support which we are getting from our vendors
and this has made sure that we get good deals." Malhotra adds.

EYEING WI-FI

OA ventured into wireless networking last fiscal. Malhotra feels that WLAN
is the area, which is all set to grow at a brisk pace, and once the government
deregulates WLAN, there are immense avenues of growth that will open up.

EYE-CATCHING ACTION

Retention of manpower on high-priority list Vendor support reflected on group's revenue

Today, the system integration business generates Rs 25 crore for OA Group and
since it is the core business of the company, Malhotra feels that all other
businesses would revolve around this. "We are one of the most prominent
integrators in the country and since we have the infrastructure required and
skilled manpower, we would continue to focus on providing the best available
solutions to the customers," Malhotra sums up.

ATANU KUMAR DAS