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Startup Mantra: Lock, stock and digital is Durolt’s mantra
Girish Nangare and his co-founder-wife Sujata grabbed opportunity presented amid Covid pandemic to launch Fonzel Office venture
Pune: Be the first (in the market) and if not differentiate your product from the rest”. This is considered the Holy Grail for any business big or small. But when Girish Nangare and his cofounder and wife Sujata started their business, it was the staid job of supplying office furniture. They were not the first and differentiating it was not possible.
Girish said, “Furniture business is not seen as very lucrative to VCs (venture capitalists) as such.” But there was demand and Girish, who had invested ₹10 lakh from his savings into Eurosteel Office Furniture Systems, was sailing on an even keel. But this was the story before Covid.
The pandemic struck and like every other business, Girish’s Eurosteel came to a standstill. And while many businesses went bust, Girish despite the despondency all around felt that he had to go on. “We had 25 employees who had worked with me for five plus years and shutting down would mean they’d become jobless. That was the foremost thought in my head. What will they do if I shut shop?”
But what would you do? There were curfews all over the world. How would Eurosteel survive to pay salaries?
“Well, I did worry about the survival of my company but the responsibility to 25 people was weighing heavily on my mind,” said Girish. He used up his savings to pay his staff 50% salaries. “This was for the junior level employees. Eventually we paid back the difference to our people, but it was still hard. At this time, I lost four of my people who moved on to other turfs. In those days many people lost hope and lost their business as a result. But I believe that with a challenge comes opportunity. And it is because we stayed put that we saw this big opportunity knocking at our door.”
The opportunity that led to the creation of Fonzel Office, his new venture.
“Post Covid, the workplace scenario changed and several offices now operated in a hybrid mode where their staff worked from home and reported to the office on some days of the week. And this changed the fate of our company,” he said.
During the days of Fonzel Office, Girish and Sujata went for some exhibitions in Europe. “Here we were very impressed with the technology of digital lockers. While we were importing these locks, we realised that they were perfectly matching the needs of the corporate hybrid work environment. The digital lockers had to incorporate electricity, electronics and have a software built to suit the needs of hybrid workers.” he said.
“As we were known as smart locker experts, we started getting leads for different use cases apart from smart staff lockers. We were sure that the imported lock system could not handle this type of use cases where there was a need of customisation. So, we developed this Made in India product ‘Durolt Smart Lockers’”, Girish said.
Since Girish is a mechanical engineer with expertise in storage manufacturing, he could do the customisation in locker manufacturing. But Sujata pitched in with her software skills and robust team and, in two years, Durolt had digital lockers that could serve the Indian market needs.
“Importing the locks would mean simply getting into the trader mode. I wanted to do more. We could have easily imported it from China, but we felt why not make it in India. So, Sujata and I worked on it for two years to develop this,” he said
And in comes differentiation
What evaded him in the first venture presented itself with Durolt. “I think it was the Make in India trend and Covid that pushed us to do this. The available solutions were not helping enough to solve the last mile logistics issue, where RFID card technology was not useful. We had to come up with some OTP-based solution. And using our skills and market needs we worked to develop our own software that would make accessing a locker smooth and hassle free,” he said.
But what about competitors?
“Yes, we do have two other companies that make digital lockers, but I think because of our furniture business we have developed support staff in several cities. So, we can offer on-ground support to our customers. We have our own software that takes into account the needs of the Indian market as well as the standards required by large MNCs. Early on we got our ISO 27001 done as this is mandatory for all vendors of large multinationals,” he said.
Getting customers
“When Hapag Llyod were looking for smart counters in India they wanted digital lockers that allowed smooth working of exchange of bills of lading without any staff. Three companies pitched for this — Smart Lock from Delhi, Quick Pod from Bengaluru and us. What worked in our favour is that we had support staff in different cities that could help the customer and we can offer them an annual maintenance contract,” Girish said.
Besides offices, the duo has also seen different uses for different sectors. A very large retail store (a non-disclosure agreement prevents them from using the name) uses Durolt lockers in its smart stores.
“Many people want to save on delivery charges. So, instead of waiting in queue to collect their parcel they simply get a code, go to the locker where their groceries are kept, collect it and get home. The same can work for housing societies where deliveries come when a person is not at home. The delivery man will get a code that will open up a locker for home, deposit the product and leave. When you return from the office all you have to do is unlock your locker with the code you get from us,” he said.
Durolt will soon be synonym to parcel locker, gym locker, mobile locker, visitor locker, asset locker.
The money story
“When we started our office furniture business, we did it with our own savings ( ₹10 lakh). Since we ordered from a company in Malaysia, we did not need money upfront. But as the business grew and customers took time to return the money, we took a bank loan of ₹20 lakh. We mortgaged our home as working capital.
“Covid hit us hard and business was down. When all of us gained some control over the pandemic, we needed money to develop our digital lockers. We mortgaged gold to take a loan again. Thankfully, the government had loosened the structures on lending post Covid, so we got an additional loan of ₹2 crore,” he said.
Today, Durolt has several customers like Hapag Llyod, Nucleus Office Park, IISC Bangalore, retails chain in the country and has a cumulative revenue of ₹5 crore in first two years. The group turnover is currently ₹25 crore.
“We will reach the ₹50-crore group revenue by next year and be 10 times that in five years. Digital lockers will do for retail and e-commerce industry what ATMs did for the banks,” he said.
