I traveled all across the world in search of success. Little did I know that my quest would end in my homeland: India.
After six months of training in my family business of textiles, I opened a small agency in Dhaka for sourcing clothes which did well. Soon we shifted to the Middle East and by 1996, under the name Pristine Trading, we grew large and were operating out of 16 countries. Around the same time I went to New York and launched a dotcom with VC funding.
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| Vipul Prakash |
Disaster struck in ’97-98 when all our businesses went down. That’s when I decided to try my luck in India.
My interest was in computer education. So, we started with Websity, a franchise of IIS Infotech. This was to be our stepping stone into our future business.
We were facing a problem of placing our students when a friend running a software business offered to hire my students on the condition that I get him three experienced employees. I did that easily. He gave me Rs 42,000 for it.
I did some number crunching immediately. If I could earn Rs 42,000 in a day, how much would I earn in 300 days? The resulting figure of Rs 1.26 crore per year was mesmerizing. I decided to get fulltime into recruitment industry—the business of hiring for others and getting paid for it, and later recruitment process outsourcing.
We started on Sep 1, 2000 without any business plan. With the hard-earned Rs 42,000, I hired a consultant for `6000 per month, paid rent of Rs 3000 per month, and had overheads of 1000 pm.
The first year was very challenging. There was no work and very few people wanted to join us. Within three months we ran out of money.
Then, a friend who runs Matrix Cellular called up asking for a sales person. I told him we would find him the best candidate, but I need the money upfront. He threw a lifeline at us with an advance of `18000. The lifeline led to a windfall.
| Snapshot |
| Name: Vipul Prakash Age: 36 Experience in business: More than 15 years Education: BBS (DU) Leadership Style: Risk friendly, Delegation driven, Hands-off Big learning: Don’t stick to an idea that has failed. Keep looking for the new elixir of business life |
| Factsheet |
| Name: Elixir Consulting Domain: Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Set up in: 2000 Turnover : 65 crore (2010) Employees: 396 + (1200 Temporary Workers) Headquarters: Noida, UP Web: www.elixirconsulting.com/ |
| Business Model |
| The company’s business is centered around fulfilling critical HR needs of business organisations. It headhunts and gets paid for every recruitment, through several specialized divisions—RPO Provider, Executive Search, Temp Staffing and Elixir, Knowledge Management Centre and contingent hiring services. With a thousand customers, Elixir has high quality recruitment standards and uses updated technology. Besides, Elixir also offers products like Employer Branding. |
A few days later, Max Ateev contacted us for a project manager. We found them the right person and made Rs 180,000.
There was no looking back after that. With swelling confidence and a bulging pocket, I started hiring people. By March-end we had earned `14 lakhs with 5 people. And over the next three years the turnover doubled and then almost quadrupled. We had hit the accelerator at a very early stage. The result: we sped to our current turnover of `65 crore, with a wish to offer a unique Elixir experience to our more than a thousand clients.
In 2004-05, we were starting newer operations in temporary staffing and then moved into Middle to Senior Management recruitment as well. We further diversified into booming sectors like Energy, Automotives, Logistics, Infrastructure, FMCG, Retail, Education and analytics, with the percentage of retained clients increasing. Three years later, we also added verticals like Manufacturing, Travel, Hospitality, Defense and Government Services to our offerings.
I believe that the foremost ingredient for a company’s success is to continuously evolve both organisational structure and product offerings.
The biggest challenge to our business came because of our inability to learn a simple lesson: when you think big, stay on the right side of the law.
In 2006, our office in Kalkaji was sealed by municipal department officials because it was running in a building where commercial activity was not allowed. Overnight our computers and data were sealed.
We had scaled up to 100 people by then. And suddenly there was no space for them. We had an additional office in Okhla, with 40 people. We had no choice but to cram our entire staff of 140 into this office. Luckily, we soon found another office in a commercial area in Kalkaji.
According to government estimates, the workforce in the country is expected to grow from the current estimate of 520 million to 574 million adding close to 11 million workers annually in the next five years. With this industry holding such huge prospects in a well populated country like India, if any company like us has to grow, these challenges are inevitably going to be a part of its journey.
Investment in training and processes and compliance with law will only help.
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