Data Care Corporation : Pune's Peshwa

Data Care emerged as the strongest distributor in the city with a turnover of
Rs 250 crore in 2007-08, up 79 percent from the previous fiscal's Rs 140 crore.
One reason for this growth was the company's decision to get into upcountry
cities of Maharashtra rather than limit itself to Pune and Mumbai. This strategy
paid off and almost 35 percent of the company's revenues came from these B- and
C-class cities.

The highlight of the year for the distribution house was its appointment as
the exclusive Dell master sales affiliate for Pune. Following this appointment,
Datacare opened up its first retail outlet for the brand in Pune and this fiscal
will open more showrooms in the city. It also signed up with China-based TCL for
distribution of its monitors.

Of the total revenue, SME/SMB, government, educa-tion, and IT segment
contri-buted five percent each, while BFSI and SOHO segment contributed eight
and seven percent respec-tively. Not surprisingly the largest chunk of the
business came from selling to the channel, like resellers and systems
integrators, contributing 50 percent.

Datacare's forte has been its ability to play with credit effectively and it
tried to pass this on to some of its customers, backing deals which exceeded the
credit limit of resellers, based on their track fiscal record. These initiatives
helped it sign up 375 new resellers largely in upcountry Maharashtra, which has
added strength to its network of 1,500 partners in Maharashtra.

The distributor also built a post-warranty service and repair practice at
standard and affordable price to customers by opening 30 service counters with
the help of its channel partners. Though the returns in the first year were not
very high, the company expected this division to contribute at least 10 percent
this fiscal. The company offered credit and back-end discounts to its customers
in order to win market share. The percentage of discounts offered were directly
related to the discounts they got from their suppliers. The need to link
supplier information to sales was critical, especially in order to ensure right
pricing.

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Profile
MD: Anil Chimaji Mhaske Start-up year: 1991 Employees: 270 Collaboration: HP Intel, Lenovo, Sony, Samsung, LG, Epson, IBM, Compaq, Dell Address: 637/A, Chandraprabhu Apartment, Near Hotel Ruthugandha, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune - 411004 Tel: 020-30217777 Website:www.dccpune.com SILVER CLUB RANK (2006-07): 15

Owing to lack of this, discounting was often arbitrary. In a bid to also make
its processes faster, the company automated its business processes with a SAP
BusinessOne deployment, which cost it close to Rs 60 lakh. With an improved
processing system in place there was data control and real time information of
transactions. The sales order to billing cycle was shortened as per and
user-level data corrections were fully eliminated by authorization control
making it easier to detect and control human errors.

Data Care also intro­duced the concept of 'Bill of Material' that included
linking of various products based on parent product and child product
relationship. With these measures it could process up to 1000 orders a day.
Keeping in mind that it had over 270 employees till close of FY 2008 the company
also deployed the Saral Pay payroll package.

Datacare is an authorized regional distributor of LG, Sony, Dell, and Epson
products in the region. It is also an exclusive authorized sub-distributor of HP
and Compaq notebooks and is a licensed business partner for Lenovo, IBM and a
premier distributor for Intel's product line.