Compumobiles to open a chain of retail stores

Cochi-based Com-pumobiles, a Nortech Group company, is planning to open a
chain of retail stores across Kerala. The comp-any recently opened a showroom in
Kozhikode and plans to enter Trivan-drum by end of this year, while Thrissur and
Kottayam are next on the list. “In the next three years, Compumobiles will
have retail stores across Kerala, covering all 11 districts and we have
earmarked an investment of Rs 30 lakh for expansion programs,” said Dunston L
Noronha, Director, Compu-mobiles. Noronha is also on the board of Nortech
Infonet Pvt Ltd.

In the next stage, the company wants to expand to Palaghat, Kannur, Quilon
and Malapurram.

Compumobiles got into retail about three years back, when the retail wave was
sweeping across the country. It entered the business with IBM as a ThinkWorld
partner in Kochi and was primarily dealing with IBM desktops, notebooks and
server ranges. When Lenovo took over IBM PC business, Compumobiles continued its
relationship and started selling Lenovo products from its retail store.
“Kerala is known for its vibrant home segment and our retail initiatives
started to pay off from the very first year. In the first year (2004-05), we
clocked a turnover of Rs 3.5 crore and last fiscal the company revenue grossed
Rs 5.5 crore. Next year, we would cross Rs 8 crore and our objective is to make
Compumobiles, a Rs 25 crore company by 2009,” he detailed.

Though Compumobiles was started only as a retail store in 2004, it ventured
into corporate business the following year and today retail and corporate busi-ness
contribute in the ratio of 70:30 respectively. “Our retail business is growing
at 70-80 percent YoY, while corporate is also becoming promising,” explained
Noronha.  Every year, the company supplies over 200 laptops to IIM
Kozhikode for their students and has other customers.

“Compumobiles will play a key role in making Nortech Group, a Rs 100 cr-ore
company, in the next couple of years,” he added.

S Gopikrishna Chennai, July 21