Data Care registers record turnover

At a time when the IT channel community saw a drop of almost 40 percent in
business during October 2008, Pune-based distributor Data Care Corporation saw
the contrary happen. The company sold goods worth Rs 26 crore in October 2008,
the highest it has billed in a month in its history. What makes this achievement
remarkable is that it comes at a time when there is a recession in the Indian IT
marketplace, not to mention, October has traditionally been one of the slack
business months for most companies.

Data Care Corporation managed to peg this figure on a single premise of its
promoter Anil Mhaske. He estimated good response from the end customers for
mobility products as well as peripherals and figured that these brands would be
in short supply during the festive season. Going by this haunch, he decided to
stock up the inventory, which paid off for Data Care Corporation.

Dell laptops contributed nearly 40 percent to the month's sale followed by
good contribution from Sony, HP and Intel as well. Peripherals like keyboards
and mice were also good drivers for business.

"October is a very slow month for business in the IT market. But our
estimates were correct and the risk we took reaped us good reward. Since we had
adequate stocks we could fulfill the demand from end customers, which were
seeing shortage in the market during the period," said Mhaske.

Mhaske said that he has learnt earlier on that product prices were likely to
go up by 20 percent and realized that they could liquidate the stocks purchased
at a good price. "We had a clue of this upcoming situation and we did heavy
buying of inventory in September which we could push through our channel
partners."

The fact that Data Care provides in-house credit facilities to channel
partners also helped it in quick liquidation of stock. "In case any of our
partners need finance to purchase stocks, we provide credit facility on two
percent interest per month," explained Mhaske.

But keeping in mind the fact that the business slowdown has affected
partners' cash flow management, Data Care took steps to offer the credit only to
key partners whom the company relies on. Also, the company took the precaution
of collecting post-dated checks (PDCs) from its partners in advance.

"We never give credit facility to people who are involved in the share
market. Before supplying goods, we always make it a point to ask our customers
where they will further sell the products. We always give credit to partners
whose customers are genuine. For example, if our customers are selling goods to
Telco and Bajaj definitely we will get our money back. Some colleges have bad
payment records so we never supply the goods to those institutes," stated Mhaske.

Though it registered a stellar performance in October, Mhaske is unsure if he
will be able to repeat the same in November.