I am optimistic that the market scenario would improve in 2003, particularly June

Comnet Vision (India) Pvt Ltd started its operations on the 1st of January 1996. Established by PK Sharma, it started out as a networking company but soon had to forgo the same and move into retailing and dealership. Today it has a showroom in Nehru Place and displays the products of Logitech, Iomega, Samsung, D-Link and others. In the first year of its operations, Comnet saw a turnover of Rs 1 crore and within five years the company moved up to Rs 50 crore revenue.

Those days

"I graduated in commerce from Institute of Cost and Works Accountancy (ICWA) Delhi, in the year 1981. After this I did a spate of software courses from NIIT, ICS, IIT, CMC, etc specific to language and system administration. From IIT I did hardware crash course and in 1993 did yet another course from Novell. I landed my first job as an accountant with Gedore Tools in 1981. Side-by-side I also pursued my course in post graduation. From being an accountant, I switched my job profile and entered the software business in the year 1985. The same year, I left Gedore Tools and joined VAM Organic Chemicals as a coordinator between Computer Departments. Again in 1987, I joined Kanoria Chemicals and Industries as a System Administrator, incharge of setting and implementation of hardware and software for in-house as well as project for outside people.

The start

It was on 31st December 1995, that I left the job and started Comnet Vision on the 1st of January 1996. The name Comnet is an abbreviation of Computer Networking. As at that time my mission was to provide networking solutions for both hardware and software. When we started, there were just four people in the name of staff. In the beginning we operated from Janakpuri District Center, where we still have an office. But, the market forces made us change our track and we became a reseller and a dealer. Slowly, we started opening up branches in Chandigarh and Ludhiana, but had to close them down because of poor profit and shrinking margins.

The obstacles

When we entered the market, the main deterrents that we had to face were the competitors. There were already many established companies in the market at the time and then the problem of shrinking margins used to give us a run for the money. Not only that, the menace of bad debts was also rampant.

Difficult times

The year 2000 was very bad in terms of low margins, bad debts and negative sales. 2001 was still better as compared to the year before. Therefore, we had anticipated a better growth this fiscal year. But, unfortunately the market refused to show any signs of encouragement. We are optimistic that the market scenario would improve in 2003, particularly June onwards. We hope to see not only an increase in sales but profits should also increase, which should be around 40 to 50 percent.

The future

We have diversified into a range of different products, for which we have constituted separate teams, who's in-charge of selling the products in the market, which are mainly targeted towards the SOHOs and the SMEs. Right now our main focus is on this sector only.

As told to Karma Negi