Cannons from Canon - 1986 (Mumbai)

Mumbai had not changed. But the Networkers returning from Agra were a changed lot. Brimming with excitement, the train journey was all about the 411s and the 511s. While new orders were fine, discussions were on how to convert the Hermes machines to the new Canon ones.

The Canon Machines gave us some new perspectives about Typewriters. Now the daisy wheels were plastic compared to the earlier steel. So the sales pitches had to change where now we would go and say that the new world wheels are easy to handle and you don’t have to bother about individual petals bending and stuff. We were all turncoats for our own advantage!! The printer carriage was something unique. It was as they say noiseless, wireless, using magnetic fields and therefore no parts were touching while movement. It was all about magnetic levitation just like those trial French Trains and it was all sounding serious high funda stuff!! The price of course was attractive and now you had a typewriter at 9995/-(INR)!!

New machines, new consumables, new typestyles(fonts) and new energy combined gave us that push to attack the market with vengeance. There were these full-page advertisements and all analysis were concentrating on enquiries - Nos received, covered, converted, etc etc. Calls from Mumbai Chief, Head Office and even AKD were galore and I thank my stars that there were no mobile phones then. Life would have been pretty miserable, answering calls rather than actually working!!

So orders were pouring in and I remember PCL sales guys almost in tow of our sales guys to try and figure what the hell was happening. So every evening I used to take these orders with advance cheques and OCAs (Order Confirmation Advice) to the Worli Reg Office and dump them in front of Ravishankar K. After that it was all about playing Digger with Mohan George on the office PC. I remember even Sudhir Sethi (Shalini Sethi’s classmate hubby- now a big cat) coming and playing with us.

The Worli office was still under renovation and was a mess. Another thing I hated about that office was the lunch supply. The sight of the insipid Dal Rice and papad that was a favourite of many was my biggest sorepoint!! So it was a great occasion when Open House opened up nearby. The Tardeo Chinese Carts were good too. But all these were nothing to beat the variety of South Mumbai. The Ballard Estate Irani Restaurant, the Stadium Restaurant beside Churchgate, Sundance Café beside Eros and so many more were all institutions and that where all the sales people would congregate to share information.

In terms of sales we also noticed that now we had started penetrating organizations. Earlier while MDs would use ETs, we now found the machines were reaching down in the organizational hierarchy. So there came the case of analyzing organizations into Major Accounts depending upon their size and network. We started realizing that sales pitches, and the type of salespeople for such accounts would need to be different and therefore came in all sorts of restructuring, different types of incentive schemes and reviewing procedures. The senior managers were also learning and that was apparent in the types of questions that would get asked. It was the start of the golden era after all where we started getting orders in bulk from various customers. The value per machine of course had gone down but we started making money on consumables.

In the meantime even Godrej came into the market with their so-called indigenous machines. While they were cheaper in price, to our advantage they were definitely not good enough in terms of technology, looks and ease of use. We could counter almost everything that they did except for the consumables prices.

When that dawned upon Network our marketing team swung into action to figure out cheaper alternatives. Now Network started sourcing large spools of carbon-coated sheets that needed to be cut into size for our “ET Ribbon Cassettes and then sold at a cheaper price. We had this extra work in terms of refilling old cassettes but then it was the requirement of the day. We knew that some tall guy named Mohor Sen was involved in managing this ribbon cutting plant (sic) at NOIDA factory premises.

Days were passing by quickly and installations were increasing manifolds. That put pressure on our service personnel and the teams needed to expand. That’s when YKC (chacha) was also figuring out in his brain on how to make money out this channel. Service Contract Revenue Targets started getting discussed seriously in forums. Though quarterly reviews were still heavily oriented towards hardware sales the timeshare of regional heads towards the subsidiary channels were increasing with passage of time.

My office territory was South Mumbai and those familiar with the city would understand when I say that it started off from the southern most tip that is Navy Nagar up to almost Tardeo. You could say that the cream of Mumbai was in this territory and that would mean additional pressure on the team. To cover every nook and corner off congested almost ghettos like Fort or Kalbadevi was not an easy task and required a lot of self- motivation. There were days of frustration in terms of not finding the reasonable prospects or perhaps losses. But then overall it was rosy most of the time and thank god to our people, the machines and the backup support we got from Service!!

Bombay House is an important landmark in Fort and you would be surprised at the various companies that exist in that same building. One could spend a whole day in just one building. I had divided my team accordingly in terms of aptitude and thoughts in terms of territories that were based not on geography but on types of accounts in spite of stiff pressure from the higher ups. If LAM could happen for a city, I fathomed that even I could have my own LAM!!! My own time was rather spent on meeting the higher ups in an organization while others would do a lot of on site pre sales and image building.

I remember Alex Jacob a Saudi returned highly motivated Keralite spending money from his own pocket and giving demonstrations all over town. Leaving ethics aside, I did reimburse him a lot of times by claiming those conveyance bills myself. As long as we were winning the end game, I really did not care!!

I was residing at Dadar East those days in a lane that could be defined as the worlds most congested road. There were no vehicles on that lane but when I would peak down from the balcony it were only the heads that were visible and no tar!! Thankfully this torture did not last for long and I shifted to Bandra. That was when the entertainment started!!