Vashi Electricals celebrates 40 years in business

We aim to have our presence in every industrial town in India in next 3 years. We must be in a position to meet the requirement of the customers in these industrial towns within 24 hours in any part of the India.

Madan Dodeja, MD and CEO, Vashi Electricals

How often do you meet someone who had a well-paid corporate job, but dared to choose a tougher path and find success and happiness in it? Someone who chose not to spend his time in cozy corporate job, but instead walked into the unknown entrepreneurial area while building and scaling the unique distribution business model?

Madan Dodeja, CEO of Vashi Group, an inspiring individual who has worked passionately towards building the business from scratch to a multi-fold, dynamic electrical distribution business across the country shares his mantra of success.

What’s new at Vashi Electricals
Vashi Electricals is a major channel partner of reputed international brands of industrial electrical products in India. For Vashi Electricals, 2018 is a year of celebration as the company marks 40 successful and delightful services to its industrial customers. In today’s competitive business environment this is a rare achievement. So to celebrate, the company has planned long year celebration activities for its customers, stakeholders and staff. To say, Vashi Electricals is more than just an electrical channel partner. It is a company of procurement specialists helping customers to lower supply chain cost and increase in efficiency. It provides basket of products under one roof to meet project or emergency maintenance requirements under one roof. Vashi Electricals has recently started its e-commerce portal and that has seen major traction across industries and geographies.

Putting the customer and workforce at the core
Our success mantra is customer oriented, said Dodeja. He adds, “Our core purpose is to provide world-class solutions to our trusted partners through innovative systems and processes. We aspire to delight our customers by performing better than their expectations. Our state-of-the-art 2 lakhs sq. ft. warehouse at Bhiwandi has more than 20,000 different products being stocked to cater the diversified needs of the customers on time. SAP ERP software, systems, processes and e-commerce portal are the backbone of our organisation. Our committed 700-workforce is proud of its glorious past, but the team believes that it has a future which will extend beyond their lifetime.”

Products, brands & solutions
Vashi Electricals majorly sells industrial electrical products such as Siemens switchgears, Legrand MCBs, ABB switchgear and automation components, Bonfiglioli geared motors, Siemens motors, Hindustan motors, Panasonic compact AC geared motors, Finolex wires and cables, Polycab wires and cables, Philips lighting, SKF bearings, Omron industrial automation, Connectwell terminal blocks, Elmeasure digital panel meters, Continental V-belt, Castrol industrial lubricants and Sapphire automation SCADA solutions.

Under services, Vashi Electricals has an in-house service station to help industrial customers repair their gearboxes and motors. All its service engineers are certified by the brands and adhere to premium quality. They have four service stations at Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon and Bangalore to help their industrial customers, just a call away. “An industrial customer can also enter into rate contract with us and procure the items with us, without worrying about the constant price fluctuations,” informs Dodeja.

Growth strategy
Talking on the company’s growth strategy for the medium- and long-term in the electrical supplies segment, the CEO of Vashi Electricals said, “We aim to have our presence in every industrial town in India in next 3 years. We must be in a position to meet the requirement of the customers in these industrial towns within 24 hours in any part of the India. The e-commerce portal is one step towards that diversified business portfolio to cater demands to customers at ease.”

Financial performance
A lot has happened in the last year. Demonetisation, GST implementation, new export laws and compliances has opened new doors to the organised players like Vashi Electricals. Commenting on the company’s performance in FY 2017-18, Dodeja said, “After GST, we have seen phenomenal rise in the customers. That is the indication that lot of people now wants to work with organised players and trusted ones in the industry. We estimate that, our sales grew by 11 to 15 per cent and our EBITA by 11 per cent for the last financial year.”

Footprint and major clients
Vashi Electricals has presence in 38 locations across India. The major client base is the OEMs, panel builders, industrial end-user market and project requirements.

Challenges
According to Dodeja, credit management and inventory planning are the biggest challenge and continue to be a main pain-point. However, he believes, through swift planning and stringent processes, these challenges can be overcome.

The way forward for stakeholders
The industrial electrical product market in the last 3 years and business scenario in particular has gone through a dramatic transformation. The challenging economic scenario coupled with high capacity build up by major manufacturers has made the market very demanding.

Vashi Electricals and Associates have served the market in the last 40 years with innovative processes which are a customer delight and hence a customers’ preferred choice. “Consistent and standardised front- and back-end processes enable us to espouse our brand value. This ensures delivery of value in customer purchase experience and thereby customer satisfaction,” said Dodeja.

He suggests, “Manufactures must look at their distributors as partners and not customers. Focus should move from primary sales to secondary sales. Stronger collaboration between manufacturer and channel will result in better solution to the customer.”

Dodeja further assures, “Adopting new technologies and implementing them with the business processes for customer delight, customer ease of business will continue to be our main agenda.”

Participating at ELECRAMA
ELECRAMA, the flagship showcase of the Indian electrical industry ecosystem and the largest congregation of power sector ecosystem in the geography, is scheduled to be held between 10-14 March at India Expo Mart, Greater Noida. Vashi Electricals will be present at the expo at Hall 1 and Stall no. R11S12 to display its range of innovative solutions.