The Sultan of Retail

Delhi-based
Ajaya Kumar Gupta, CMD, Park Network, is a multi-faceted business
personality. Though primarily a distributor, he was the pioneer to
foray into the IT retailing business. He believes that this business
model is definitely going to drive the IT business market in India.
So he does not mind oscillating his thinking between that of a
distributor and a retailer as and when needed.

Hailing from
Panipat, Gupta did his electronics engineering from REC Kurukshetra
and MBA in Finance from University of Delhi. Before starting his own
company in 1999, he worked at several companies, Western Electronics
being the last where he served from 1986-1991. In fact, for Gupta,
the aspiration behind his entrepreneurship was late Sunder T Vachani,
who was the MD of Western Electronics. “Although, I gained many
business skills while working with Vachani, but 2 important business
learnings were, handling crisis management and confidence of facing
the world,” affirms Gupta.

Gupta has
spent more than 20 years in the computer hardware industry and today,
he is one of the best-known distributors in the retail
entrepreneurship segment of IT products across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh
and Haryana.

JOURNEY
FROM PARK ELECTRONIK TO PARK NETWORK

The journey
of Park Network first started in 1991 with Park Electronik, earlier a
proprietor concern. It started as a small trader with capital
investment of Rs 5 lakh. Then it used to deal with OEMs and had an
ancillary unit for HCL. As its business turnover reached Rs 25 lakh,
it became a pvt ltd company and rechristened to Park Network Pvt Ltd
in 1997. “All these years, our friends and relatives financially
supported us. But in 2004, we took a bank loan of Rs 50 lakh from
Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC), which pumped up 35% growth in the
business,” says Gupta.

Park Network
started its distribution journey with HCL BusyBee PC in 1997. It was
the first exclusive distributor for HCL. The relationship with HCL
continued for almost 5 years, then with a break of a year, it resumed
in 1998. This was the time when Park expanded its footprint from
western UP to Delhi. Also, it entered into retailing and opened its
first retail store in Noida and office at Nehru Place in Delhi.

The same
year, Park also joined a distribution agreement with Samsung. “When
we started there were hardly any retail stores in Delhi. We leveraged
this retail opportunity and are proud to say that all the current
major IT brands were launched through us in India,” says Gupta.

SUCCESS
PILLAR

Gupta
believes that trust is the backbone of any business and supporting
vendors and end customers with great comfort and honesty can bring
one bigger results. He says, “We are supporting them at their
initial stage. It might be a small product initially but we stand by
them and as they grow we too grow with them.” The passion to sell
best products, with a dedicated team and an enterprising vision, is
what has made Ajaya Kumar of Park Network a success in the channel
community.

Park Network
does not believe in accepting deals on a short-term basis. “Our aim
is to sell the
best technology but that alone will not do because only technology
doesn't mean reliability. We make sure that we sell reliable
products. We prefer to sell products which we have been selling for
years. Once you are sincere about your business, customers too do not
want to change around too much. Gratifying all the expectations of
the customers lowers down the chances of losing them,” he explains. He
further adds, “Even when we have lost them we have continued to
provide them the services and got them back again.”

CHALLENGING
TIMES

For Park
Network's growth, HCL, HP and Microsoft were important vendors.
But, these partnerships could not stay for long. After the exit of
HCL and Microsoft from Park's portfolio, HP also snapped ties.
Remembering old times, Gupta says, “In golden days distributor's
used to marry vendors, but now the scenario has changed. Losing HP
was a major setback. This happened after the appointment of Sunil
Dutt at HP. This loss has not only eaten our business but created a
big vacuum, since HP used to hold 30% of our business. Similarly, the
changes in guard at HCL and Microsoft also took away our business.”

GET GOING

After going
through various rough phases, the company again bounced back and
signed new agreements. Today, it has 5 retail stores across Delhi,
Noida and Haryana. The company has 2 stores for Nokia, 2 exclusive
stores for Lenovo and 1 multi-branded showroom which was earlier a HP
World store. “Currently, we are enjoying our partnerships with
Sony, AOC, Sennheiser, Toshiba and Canon as tier-1 distributor.
Moreover, we are sub-distributor for Samsung, Lenovo and Sennheiser
are the new ones to join the list of vendors,” he points out.

Park Network
notched a turnover of Rs 116 crore in FY '10-11 with retail
business contributing Rs 18 crore and the rest coming from
sub-distribution. The company attributes
this performance to various vendors it added to its sub-distribution
portfolio. We have set a target to achieve Rs 135 crore by 2012.
Also, we will grow our retail business from 18-25%. Though we have
spent two decades in this business still 'I don't feel settled',”
he remarks.

Park Network
has a strength of 100 employees and has 3 independent CEOs. Neeraj
Gupta, is responsible for Noida operations, Rajiv Gupta for Delhi,
and Haryana is being handled by GD Bhargava.

FAMILY

Gupta got
married in 1984 to Vinita Gupta, who is also an MBA and plays a
pivotal role in Park Network. They are blessed with 2 sons, but
neither of the boys have yet shown any desire to join Park Network. A
hard core businessman, Gupta has also been testing his hands on
playing golf. He is a fitness freak and loves to swim. He also enjoys
reading management books.