Wellwin gets into service for revenue

Wellwin Industry, the Rs 72 crore distribution company, is getting into service business aggressively. Recently, the company has set up its service shop for motherboards, hard disk drives, speakers and
SMPS.

"We take all out-of-warranty products for service and Wellwin can provide chip-level service of products to the customers," said S Sampath Kumar, General Manager, Wellwin Industry Limited. As the service business looks lucrative and margins are very good here, Wellwin is planning to set up service centers in all its branch offices across South India in the next one year. "We are looking at earning a revenue of Rs 10 lakh per month through service," he said.

Meanwhile, Wellwin has become Canon authorized service partner last month. "We are also looking at tying up with more MNC brands for authorized status in service," he added.

Recently, Wellwin has started its hardware training school in Chennai to generate qualified technicians and recruit absorb them into their business. "In the next one year, service will be a major business for us and a substantial revenue is expected from this source," he said. Wellwin is targeting a turnover of Rs 100 crore this fiscal (October-September) and projects a revenue of Rs 150 crore in the next year. "With new products coming-in and service picking up we are sure to reach this number," said Kumar.

Wellwin has recently tied-up with Celetron India for marketing their range of memory products (128 MB RAM, 256 MB RAM and also 64 MB RAM for back-to-back orders). The company represents them only in southern states and Celetron is a US-based company having its subsidiary office in India. "Probably, we would be one of the few companies in India to channelize RAM trade and bring billing process. We also give two-year warranty for the products which would be the winning edge," he said. Celetron products are based on Micron chips and has got well acceptance in the market.

Apart from memory products, the company is also adding up processors in the fleet. Soon, it is bringing Intel and VIA range of processors in the list and justifying this Sampath Kumar says, "The strategic move would help us in improving the motherboard sales by bundling with the processors." The company is also negotiating with few networking companies to market their active and passive networking components.

Wellwin, so far known as a regional distributor owing to its considerable presence in the South, is expanding its presence in North too. The company is setting up branch offices in Noida, Chandigarh and Jaipur, and is expanding its base in South as well. "Presently, South contributes more than 75 percent of business while North shares 20 percent. We don't have significant presence in East and West. However, after the expansion in North, the ratio would be changed to 65:35 (for South and North respectively) in the coming years." At present, the company has no plans to venture into Western region.

Wellwin is also increasing its channel numbers from 700 to 1000.

S Gopikrishna