Exclusive Interview with Ms. Purvi Patel, Co-founder and Whole time director, Creative Newtech Limited
Ms. Purvi Patel, who supervises the implementation of business strategy and planning at Creative Newtech, is the epitome of a modern professional woman. She effortlessly manages the arduous responsibility of assessing market strategies and taking responsibility for introducing niche products for the organization’s growth and productivity. Her proactive initiative, keen business sense, contagious passion, positive energy, and optimistic attitude enable her to motivate her team and build long-term strong client relationships. Her unique way of formulating thoughtful business strategy decisions and envisioning effective marketing and sales approaches, helped the organisation carve out a niche among its customers.
Ms. Patel began her career in the early 1990s as a strong supporter to Mr. Ketan Patel, Chairman and Managing Director, when Creative’s business consisted of volume driven products including monitors, desktops, and other computer peripheral components. Realizing the changing market, Ms. Patel and Mr. Patel moved on to become end-to-end distribution specialists for niche, experiential brands. This led to the emergence of Creative as a market entry and penetration specialist.
Ms. Patel’s future plan for Creative Newtech is to penetrate numerous geographies across India and countries in APAC and the Middle East. Her aim is to leverage their strength to enable more niche brands to enter and expand in new markets. Moreover, their expertise in licensed manufacturing will also be well-used as they bring more brands under this business model. She also heads the newly launched digital platform Ckart. As the platform gains momentum with more customers and transactions, she aims to utilize this technical know-how to expand the platform with additional functionalities and services, which would yield new revenue streams. Her plans are also to offer virtual warehousing services to customers after a certain period of time. The services may either be integrated into Ckart, or may be offered via new digital platforms. In a sector crowded with competitors, Ms. Patel is confident in Creative Newtech’s approach.
Creative NewTech was previously known as Creative Peripherals. What was the purpose behind rebranding your company?
In the new world of digital transformation, we need innovations and technology ideas that will help address the radically changing consumer and lifestyle needs. Creative Newtech Ltd represents this ethos of change and adaptability. We, as an organisation, are looking at technology from a new perspective to scale new horizons and take advantage of the business opportunities presented by the ever-evolving, fast-paced digital environment of tomorrow.
At Creative, we believe in the power of ideas and innovation that presents newer opportunities for sustainable, scalable and meaningful change. We also understand that while every opportunity may not be a business, but every idea can become a business opportunity. Therefore, we take ownership of every business idea which we stand committed to execute through our experience and expertise and take it to newer heights – building trust and long-lasting associations along the way.
It is this belief and the drive to constantly remain relevant in a fast-changing digital world that has led us to changing the official name of the Company from “Creative Peripherals and Distribution Limited” to “Creative Newtech Limited”. “Newtech” stands for “New Technologies”. This is what brands, partners and end consumers can expect from us – to be at the forefront of delivering the latest and most relevant technologies to the market. Our new brand logo also represents the same identity and vision of always powering ahead with great business ideas.
The pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of supply chains at global level – according to you what are the industry challenges?
The pandemic was a worldwide phenomenon at some stage or other various nations went into lockdown and over the years everybody had tried to build a super-efficient model with just in time inventory and scaling production with less dependency on certain countries for certain types of products.
All this efficiency is become bottleneck overnight, initially from a high inventory to sales ratio because of the lockdown to a point where acute shortage of material was there and In addition to this maritime freight increased by 1500%, while air freight increased by nearly double, the cost of domestic freight distribution has increased by 25%. We had experienced everything during the pandemic.
But as they say every challenge is an opportunity to learn, we move from a central decision and supply chain model to a multi fragmented supply chain model with decision making also being passed on to various regional heads.
Cash flow, availability of products particularly in electronics and price increase are some of the industry challenges currently.
Have you observed any shift in consumer patterns, particularly from a geographical point of view from within India when it comes to online buying?
Due to the pandemic the digital shift propelled at a very fast pace and grew rapidly, C and D class cities also moved to online purchases. Even traditional stores have also opted for the omni channel sales, and we can see that post pandemic this consumer pattern will be permanent and keep on going.
What are the expansion plans? Are there any plans to extend the categories?
We are looking forward to the Gaming, and Honeywell licensee expansion. In the last quarter we launched Audio and AirPurifier ranges and now we are looking for more geographical expansion.
Being a women entrepreneur what mentoring tips would you like to share with upcoming Women Entrepreneurs?
If you see my Job Description it says “Whatever it takes” that has been my guiding philosophy. It is about doing what it takes to reach one’s goal. So, one should start first and be careful where you would be heading towards. Everything else will fall into place if one has a vision to succeed in life.
I believe “One should know their markets”. Being a business woman I require vision and enthusiasm, and recommend discarding the rose-tinted glasses to conduct regular competitor scans and genuinely comprehend the customers’ needs. Creative Newtech is making significant progress across all three business lines, with plans to accelerate the company’s growth in the next few years to be sustainable, scalable, and resilient.