Consumer goods retailer Viveks can give a lesson or two to biggies

CHENNAI:
As the year drew to a close in 1977, residents of Chennai’s conservative
Brahmin-dominated Mylapore were witness to an interesting sight. Hordes of
people had plonked themselves on the footpath outside a quaint little shop,
quite curious at the prospect of owning a Rs 200 Murphy transistor at a
discounted price! The innovative pricing strategy created a ripple in the
market, and carved a mindspace for Viveks among consumers that is still hard to
beat.

Circa 2010, Chennai-based leading retailer of consumer
durables, Viveks, is still going strong with even national chains having to take
a few well-meaning cues on how to operate in the competitive southern
metro.

The Rs 400-crore Viveks, founded by the late BA Narayana Setty
and now steered by his three brothers—BA Kodandarama Setty, BA
Chandrasekhar and BA Srinivasa—has earned the laurel of being a more
trusted brand than the multifarious brands it sells.

Viveks started
its journey in 1965 when white goods were rationed by manufacturers and
customers literally had to queue up for allotment. “There was a limited
product range when we started out. No refrigerators, washing machines or
television sets. Only radio transistors—we had brands like Murphy, Bush
and Telerad,” says Viveks CMD Kodandarama Setty, recalling a time when
buying a radio was considered a big thing. That was the age of rationing, when
one had to wait two weeks to buy a Sumeet mixie, a few years for a gas
connection and even longer for a telephone line!

In those days,
every second foreign-returned person would bring back a TV or VCR. But Viveks
believed that when one desires to buy an electronic item, he should be able to
walk into a neighbourhood store, not travel to a neighbouring country. “It
was with this idea that we chose to expand big.”

Staying atop
the congested white goods retail market is an enormous challenge. Not
surprisingly, a brand like Viveks, which virtually pioneered the concept of
consumer durables retail chain in Chennai, has consistently found the right
answers to the innumerable questions that have been cropped up in its 45-year
journey.

“We started with a capital base of Rs 5,000 and earned
a turnover of Rs 1.02 lakh in the first year,” Mr Setty recalls
nostalgically. If Viveks’ revenues for the first month of its operations
were Rs 8,000, the southern electronics major, with 2 lakh sq ft under its belt
now, has an average billing amount of Rs 14,000 today.