Vashi Electricals sees huge response in e-commerce biz

October 9, 2017 2:12 pm

Our e-commerce team has been working round-the-clock to cater to the huge influx of enquiries and orders. We are receiving orders from places that I never even knew existed!

Vashi Electricals has recently launched an ecommerce portal for selling motors, wires and cables, switchgears, gearboxes, motors and allied electrical products online. After witnessing its initial success, the company is gearing up for the next move! Excerpts from an interview with Vijay Nichani, Vice President – Purchase, Vashi Electricals:

VEPL claims to be the preferred channel partner of major electrical MNCs. What makes you different from other channel partners?
A key element of our success is that we know what our customers want. We are backed by solid hard work and experience of 40 years of service in the trade. Besides this passion for service, we have superb infrastructure in terms of state-of-the-art systems and processes and inventory holding capacities. We also have an enviable active customer base. These qualities are acknowledged and appreciated by the electrical MNCs as it gives them a ready market to further their brand.

How do you bring the best experience for your customers?
We invest a lot in technology which enables us to achieve speed and scale in operations. We have dedicated CRMs that handle about 75 customers each and literally provide customised service to each customer.

We deal in over 40,000 SKUs and continuously check which items are more fast-moving than others, and keep adequate stocks based on anticipated demand.

These steps help us to improve our customer service ratio. Currently, we close 85 per cent of our orders within 4 days and we aspire to constantly better that ratio.

There is a lot more that we have planned to enhance customer experience.

Bad debts continue to remain the biggest concern for traders especially in the B2B industry. Has the situation deteriorated post demonetisation and GST?
Bad debts and delayed payments are a roadblock and reduce our margins. Fortunately we have a dedicated credit control team that ensures collection through systematic and organised follow-up. However, there is scope for improvement in the process and result.

How are you dealing with this?
We have assigned credit limits to our customers based on their business of last few years and payment capacity, and we try to keep our exposure limited to that extent for each customer. Of course we have more detailed financial analysis for new customers before we extend credit. But as I said earlier, there is a lot more scope for improvement.

How far are you from reaching out to every industrial town in India?
We currently have a huge presence in major cities and towns in India. And now with GST, the whole country is one single market without any boundaries. Moreover, we have recently launched our e-commerce portal and that has enabled us to literally enter into people’s offices and homes, not just industrial towns.

Of late, you have announced your e-commerce platform. How is the response?
The response has been stupendous! Our e-commerce team has been working round-the-clock to cater to the huge influx of enquiries and orders. We are receiving orders from places that I never even knew existed! It’s been a great eye-opener for us and we are overwhelmed by the potential! It’s huge.