From Dhokla to Dhanda

Great efforts amalgamated with great talent produces the greatest outliers. In the land of opportunities, the greatest team came and conquered.

In the first month of the year 2019, we finally moved from a “one room” office to a full-fledged one with a CCD machine! People living in this office even grew bigger, some literally, some figuratively! So much so that they are now eying to be at the forefront of the newly formed West dream and OfCommerce.

We are blessed to be in the land of businesses — Gujarat, where children are taught “Hisab” and “Negotiation” before they finish primary schooling. To thrive in this environment, we have to push boundaries everyday.

At the beginning of the year, Gujarat was sitting at the potential of building a new book of 2–3cr. a month. In today’s times, it has grown to a minimum of 20cr. a month and the surprising factor is we are still maintaining the same team size. Great efforts with great talent — that’s the Ahmedabad office for you! This is a tribute to all who have slogged out throughout the year and made this miracle possible.

The Heavy Secure Lending Hitters:

While searching for new opportunities to grow, we found the untapped SME market of Gujarat which not only was bigger in size but also had an amazing opportunity in terms of quality lending. We doubled down our efforts to penetrate deep into this front. Harshil and Nagendra took this challenge upon themselves. They relentlessly pursued every SME client in the town making sure everyone knows the name OFB and what we stand for. They literally cold-called all names from a database of 1200 SME’s! They travelled all over Gujarat making sure no client is untouched, be it small or large, nothing escaped their reach. It was indeed a great challenge to cobbvert Gujju customers. Harshil through his charm and Nagendra through his experience and “wisdom” made it happen. Soon after this, we started getting traction and got our initial converts which gave us momentum and confidence to go for more. In the mid-year, we became seasoned players in the SME getting steady growth. In the last quarter, as it turned out, we almost had a strike rate of 80% with every SME guy. No meeting got wasted, the client either gave us docs, or order, but all of them just had to work with us.

The All-rounder:

Jahaan naa pohanche gaadi wahaan pohanche Marwari!

While our book was booming, Shubham had taken another responsibility to explore other markets to bring diversity to our portfolio. Being a person who always wanted to break the status quo, he experimented by approaching different dealerships, electrical contractors, Battery manufacturers, Tarpaulin manufacturers. Any new initiative and he was in front of it. He even filled up as office HR in his past time! Through his amazing work ethics and Marwari negotiation skills, he managed to get the most diverse stream of customers for us. This guy never shied away from the challenge of an unknown market or industry. When commerce started, he went door to door selling polymer, increasing numbers of customers many fold. When we wanted to experiment with a new financing product, he again took initiative and got us clients, from industries which were completely unknown to us. Lately, he has found love in his home state Rajasthan where he started both Udaipur and Jodhpur market. Also helped me in fulfilling my old dream of working from a tourist place. Godspeed to the all-rounder of the Gujju team.

The Experienced Adult:

To enjoy the taste of hot slurpy tea, it needs to be sipped from Saucer.

To handle a bunch of hot-headed young guys, Shriram has played an excellent role as an adult in town. With his abundant experience in the financial services sectors, he has taught the team to maintain hygiene in our portfolio. At the same time due to swift decision making, underwriting TAT has reduced to merely 3 days. He also has played de facto counsellor to sales guys in distress. He is the one responsible for creating utopia like situations, where sales and underwriting live peacefully without having daily conflicts with each other. From doing all cases alone, he has grown his team to 8 people this year.

The Profiteers:

Ek Sindhi das Marwari pe bhaari!

Gone are the days when we were dependent on help from the Central team for material rates. Hitesh has transformed the region from a handful of buyout customers to the point where West profit margin has come to a similar level of North. This guy is solely responsible for converting almost every SME customer from marketplace to buyout. Our suppliers literally tremble in fear by Hitesh’s call anticipating more negotiations. Hitesh has truly given justice to his Sindhi heritage by overshooting all his profit margin targets.

In the age of commerce, Hardik has stayed true to our core of doing Purchase Finance. There is no polymer client who isn’t aware of OFB or Hardik Kansara. He has even gone ahead and sold purchase finance to the nephew of Kokilaben (Yes, she is the wife of Late Dhirubhai Ambani!) Hardik has created a stable portfolio of purchase finance in the polymer sector across Gujarat. He has left no client or DCA untouched. Today if anyone in the polymer industry needs financing, the first call goes to none other than our star Hardik Kansara.

The Exes:

Tum humesha humare dil me rahoge!

Multiple people who are no longer with us have contributed tremendously for the growth of the region. Special thanks should be given to Ankur for getting BL book up and running, Gautam for setting up Baroda and Utkarsh and Sanket for getting Rajkot off the ground. You guys will surely be missed.

The New Blood:

Budhe logo please make way for us!

Here comes the age of new blood who has made strides in new areas and are giving tough competition to the old guard! Vaibhav has killed in Sales, Operations, commerce and BidAssist and now on his road to becoming the champion of OfCommerce. Aditya has got his first self-sourced SME client for the company. Kartik has taken on a challenging task to develop M.P. and Nagpur and make it another full-fledged region.

Be wary of these new breed of rock stars! They may snatch away all the glory in this coming year.

The Collector:

Sir, aap new business pe focus karo, collection mere pe chhodo!

This dialogue is heard in our office almost every other day. Shailendra is the reason sales and underwriters are able to sleep in peace every day. After joining this year, he has taken over all collection cases and made sure they pay us and pay us on time. Through his vast experience in Vasooli and managing client relationships on par with seasoned sales guy, defaulters just can’t resist giving their money to him. Let this new year be such that you can also sleep in peace with no collection left! :P

The Backbone:

Last but not least, these are the people who support us in making sure every process goes smoothly. Manali made sure all documentation from clients is completed within TAT of 3–4 days freeing up a lot of sales bandwidth and accelerating overall sanction process. Fazal and Tabrez are our darlings who have taken over all post-pre sanction work from sales and made sure the overall disbursement process is seamless. For many clients, these people have become the first point of contact even before a salesperson. Kudos to the wonderful team!

To sum it up, 2019 was a year of Super Growth for us. 2020 will be even bigger and better!

Godspeed to all of us!