Known is the fact that numerous factors come into consideration while selecting the right sourcing partner. However, that one factor which has bagged the prime importance in the selection procedure is the availability of ready stock/inventory. Dinesh Singh Samyal, CEO of LWI Electronics shares with Baishakhi Dutta of Electronicforu.com Network, how the company ensures seamless service to its customer by banking heavily on inventory. Excerpt follows…
Q) What’s unique about your team (or firm) that’s beneficial for customers to do business with you?
LWI Electronics is an ISO 9001:2015 organization that has built a reputation for itself as a highly reliable provider of service and semiconductors.
The adoption of an innovative and practical approach to independent distribution enables LWI to deliver quality and consistency. We have also got a state of the art 24*7 updated stock search facility. We have an in-house ISO 9001:2015 component testing lab that enables us to improve on quality and testing facility for obsolete parts.
We are the only company from India to have first acquired ISCP certification (from TBF-Canada), ERAI membership (US), STRC (Hong Kong) and ESC (India). LWI has been recently ranked as one of the world’s Top 10 rated members by TBF Canada & ICS (USA). All these qualities add up together while serving our customers.
Q) What’s your strategy to meet the demands of your customers?
LWI stocks a huge inventory of line card items that makes us one of the leading stocking distributors of the country. We have more than 2,95,000 highly-allocated, MIL/industrial line items in stock along with over a dozen franchisees all over the globe. We ensure a wide range of semiconductor, networking and connectivity solutions for the industrial and the defense segment.
Q) Who are your main customer base?
LWI only supports the government, OEMs and export customers. Whereas LWI’s associate company “Live Wire Informatics” caters to startups and private manufacturing facilities.
Q) Do you facilitate demos or prototyping activities for your customers who may want to try out new designs?
We always aim to support our customers during the time of production crisis by providing samples and taking prior approval before the acceptance of samples and making bulk supplies. We also support other services like – kitting, assembly and device programming.
Q) Do you have a team to help customers in designing their products?
We have a group of experienced technical people who are well versed in providing turnkey solutions in electronics to our customers. We also provide data sheets and cross-reference
Q) What are the top 3 qualities you would advise to customers while choosing the right sourcing partner?
- We recommend customers to look out for the following credentials of a supplier before sourcing crucial components for any equipment:
- The number of years in business and credibility of a supplier
- The financial and stocking capability of a supplier
- Strongly avoid any brokers/agents/middleman companies
Q) How do you see the role of online sales affecting components distribution business? Have you started tapping this segment too?
The future of component distribution business is going to be online sales. At LWI, the stock-inventory is uploaded online on a daily basis along with the inventory of our associates.
Q) How’s been the growth of your organisation in the last 2 years? And, how do you see it for this financial year?
The business growth was much better after the introduction of GST by the Indian government. LWI’s component exports have also increased more than 50 per cent in 2018-19 and we expect to double the revenue by 2020.
Q) What’re the best management practices that you’ve adopted?
When it comes to employee management, we ensure to trust all our employees, give them freedom and freehand to all the teams to function effectively.
Q) Any major initiatives taken in the last financial year that you’d like to share with our audience?
Some of the major initiatives undertaken are:
- Increased over 2,95,000 line items to help us achieve the fastest delivery record of LWI in our industry
- Introduction of new test lab in India with state of the art test equipment for quality control
- Increase in our warehouse area
Q) What are your key focus areas for the next financial year?
For the next fiscal year, we aim to do the following:
- Focus on growth in exports
- Double the skilled manpower
- Increase line items to 300 thousand plus
Q) Any views on current government policies related to import-export, GST and electronics manufacturing?
The government should make GST simple by having lower tax rates of 5 per cent on components as this is a raw material for production. We urge the government to look into the exports documentation which needs to be liberal on GST preview. We have seen a positive business improvement under the NDA government and hope that their ongoing thought-process to improve business will benefit the components industry at large.
