Vijay Kumar. P 10H, Saraswati Nilayam Jawahar Nagar Trivandrum 695 003

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Castrol India Limited

I was lucky to join Castrol at a time when the liberalisation of the economy was just beginning. The restriction in production capabilities brought about on account of having to buy base oils from the public sector oil companies (predominantly IOC) was no longer a limiting factor. The direct import of base oils and the consequent rise in production and market share, saw the company's sales turnover growing at 35 to 40% against the then industry growth rate of 2 to 3 %. A very challenging and demanding environment - very rewarding too!

The personal high point in my stint with Castrol was undoubtedly the recognition received for outstanding performance, at our National Sales conference in Kathmandu.

The Couple of years after Castrol...

The work at Castrol was always very demanding and when a business opportunity came by, which demanded a lot of my time, the only option was to leave the company. Having done so, I spent many days in Mumbai pursuing the opportunity of setting up a downstream plant for a fibre glass plant that was being set up in Goa. It slowly became apparent that the project cost would be far above what I had initially envisaged. For a person without deep pockets or a background in business, this was simply not viable. Pressure mounted to rejoin Castrol but with the urge of entrepreneurship burning, I continued to resist and kept hopping from one project study to the next. The projects studied ranged from tourism, to plastics to Ayurveda and more.

At this time, I associated with a company based in Jamshedpur called Inkas India, being their representative for non-conventional energy products for the markets of Kerala and Pondicherry. Another company that I was involved with at this time was Electro Konnects, which was setup with a couple of batchmates from the University and was primarily dealing with the distribution of electrical components.

Kumars

I eventually went to set up a sole proprietory company - KUMARS - and took up the franchise operations for several companies. The first and foremost amongst them was the exclusive franchise for teleshopping - a new concept introduced by the Unilazer group, headed by Mr. Ronnie Screwalla (of the UTV fame). Soon to follow was ATCO, with their digital weighing machines, Cash Registers, Electronic Safes etc.

InApp

When the opportunity of associating in the formation of a software company came by, the operations at KUMARS was slowly wound up. From the initial formation of Parivartan Infotech and later InApp itself, the journey has been similar in some ways to the Castrol days – that of being a provider of many an interesting learning experiences -- and this continues in unabated measure to this day.