Park Network : The Sultanate of Retail

Delhi-based Ajaya Kumar Gupta, CMD,
Park Network, is a multi-faceted
business personality. Though primarily
a distributor, he was the pioneer to foray into
the IT retailing business. He believes that this
business model is definitely going to drive the
IT business market in India. So he does not
mind oscillating his thinking between that of a
distributor and a retailer as and when needed.

Hailing from Panipat, Gupta did his electronic
engineering from REC Kurukshetra and
MBA in Finance from University of Delhi. Before
starting his own company in 1999, he
worked at several companies, Wes tern Electronics
being the last where he
served from 1986-1991. In fact,
for Gupta, the aspiration behind
his entrepreneurship was late
Sunder T Vachani, who was the
MD of Western Electronics. “Although,
I gained many business
skills while work ing with Vachani,
but 2 important business learnings
were, handling crisis manag -
ement and confidence of facing
the world,” affirmes Gupta.

Gupta has spent more than 20
years in the computer hardware
industry and today, he is one of
the best-known distributors in the
retail entrepreneurship segment
of IT products across Delhi, Uttar
Pradesh and Haryana.

JOURNEY FROM PARK ELECTRONIK TO PARK NETWORK
The journey of Park Network
first started in 1991 with Park
Electronik, earlier a proprietor
concern. It started as a small trader
with capital investment of Rs 5 lakh. Then it
used to deal with OEMs and had an ancillary
unit for HCL. As its business turnover reached
Rs 25 lakh, it became a pvt ltd company and
rechristened to Park Network Pvt Ltd in 1997.
“All these years, our friends and relatives
financially supported us. But in 2004, we took a bank loan of Rs 50 lakh from Oriental Bank
of Commerce (OBC), which pumped up 35%
growth in the business,” says Gupta.

Park Network started its distribution journey
with HCL BusyBee PC in 1997. It was the
first exclusive distributor for HCL. The relationship
with HCL continued for almost 5
years, then with a break of a year, it resumed in
1998. This was the time when Park expanded
its footprint from western UP to Delhi. Also, it
entered into retailing and opened its first retail
store in Noida and office at Nehru Place in Delhi.
The same year, Park also joined a distribution
agreement with Samsung. “When we started there were hardly any retail stores in Delhi. We
leveraged this retail opportunity and are proud
to say that all the current major IT brands were
launched through us in India,” says Gupta.

SUCCESS PILLAR
Gupta believes that trust is the backbone of
any business and supporting vendors and endcustomers
with great comfort and honesty
can bring one bigger results. He says, “We
are supporting them at their initial stage. It
might be a small product initially but we stand
by them and as they grow we too grow with
them.” The passion to sell best products, with
a dedicated team and an enterprising vision, is
what has made Ajaya Kumar of Park Network a
success in the channel community.

Park Network does not believe in accepting
deals on a short-term basis. “Our aim is
to sell the best technology but that alone will
not do because only technology doesnÂ’t mean
reliability. We make sure that we sell reliable
products. We prefer to sell products which we
have been selling for years. Once you are sincere
about your business, customers too do
not want to change around too much. Gratifying
all the expectations of the customers
lowers down the chances of losing them,” he
explains. He further adds, “Even when we have lost them we have continued to provide them
the services and got them back again.”

CHALLENGING TIMES
For Park NetworkÂ’s growth, HCL, HP and
Microsoft were important vendors. But, these
partnerships could not stay for long. After the
exit of HCL and Microsoft from ParkÂ’s portfolio,
HP also snapped ties.

Remembering old times, Gupta says, “In
golden days distributorÂ’s used to marry vendors,
but now the scenario has changed. Losing
HP was a major setback. This happened
after the appointment of Sunil Dutt at HP. This
loss has not only eaten our business
but created a big vacuum,
since HP used to hold 30% of our
business. Similarly, the changes in
guard at HCL and Microsoft also
took away our business.”

GET GOING
After going through various rough
phases, the company again bounced
back and signed new agreements.
Today, it has 5 retail stores across
Delhi, Noida and Haryana. The
company has 2 stores for Nokia,
2 exclusive stores for Lenovo
and 1 multi-branded showroom
which was earlier a HP World
store. “Currently, we are enjoying
our partnerships with Sony, AOC,
Sennheiser, Toshiba and Canon as
tier-1 distributor. Moreover, we
are sub-distributor for Samsung,
Lenovo and Sennheiser are the new
ones to join the list of vendors,” he
points out.

Park Network notched a turnover
of Rs 116 crore in FY ‘10-11 with retail
business contributing Rs 18 crore and the
rest coming from sub-distribution. The company
attributes this performance to various
vendors it added to its sub-distribution portfolio.
We have set a target to achieve Rs 135
crore by 2012. Also, we will grow our retail
business from 18-25%. Though we have spent
two decades in this business still ‘I don’t feel
settled’,” he remarks.

Park Network has a strength of 100 employees
and has 3 independent CEOs. Neeraj
Gupta, is responsible for Noida operations,
Rajiv Gupta for Delhi, and Haryana is being
handled by GD Bhargava.

FAMILY
Gupta got married in 1984 to Vinita Gupta,
who is also an MBA and plays a pivotal role
in Park Network. They are blessed with 2
sons, but neither of the boys have yet shown
any desire to join Park Network. A hard core
businessman, Gupta has also been testing his
hands on playing golf. He is a fitness freak
and loves to swim. He also enjoys reading
management books.