Coral Telecom Ltd. endeavours to design, develop, manufacture and deploy telecom solutions. It has sales and service infrastructure that spans across the length and breadth of India through its own branch locations at fourteen cities. Coral also has 150 resellers, each operating in their niche area and exports its products to 14 countries.
NDTV : How did Coral Telecom start? What was the concept behind it? Who all started?
Tulli : It was started by three of us as a trading company. We were trading in telecom boxes. We left our job and started it all from a small shack. Coral has been like a procession. It kept going and people kept adding to it and it has become bigger and bigger by the day. We have 450 people now in our office.
NDTV: What was the initial investment like when it started with four people?
Tulli : We didn't have any money. We were all service class people. I sold my Maruti car just a few weeks before I started this business. So that was the initial capital of Rs 2.5 lakhs.
NDTV: So now you are saying there are 450 people in Coral Telecom. What is the core business of Coral Telecom?
Tulli : We design telecom switches. Telecom switches are these PBX that is used in hotels, offices etc. We also supply equipments to the Indian army which is a very modern switching device.
NDTV: This is something that is used in the defence and what about commercial use that is in a office or in a hospital? How is the set up there?
Tulli : We have customers like housing societies, hospitals like Apollo Hospital, BHEL campus and naval bases. They employ our products for communication within their campuses.
NDTV: So R & D is very important for your business?
Tulli : Coral draws its largest strength from design efforts and we customize our products to meet India specific customer requirements. Railways, defence, ISRO, security forces they all have specific requirements which are not necessarily fulfilled by products. So we can customize our products to meet their specific requirements like we are supplying wireless equipment to the Air Force and they operate on a frequency band that is not the standard frequency band. So we have customized our wireless equipments.
NDTV: L& T is one of the major concerns for your kind of business. What is your investment every year on R & D?
Tulli : That is our strength and we spend almost about 7 percent of our top line ie about Rs 6-7 crore is what we spend on our R & D year after year.
NDTV: Coral Telecom has been into the business since 1991 and there are a lot of big names in the business as well so what is Coral's strength to create a niche for itself in the market?
Tulli : Siemens, Ericsson, Alcatel are big players in the industry competing with us. Our designs and R & D efforts give us a competitive edge vis-à-vis these players. India is a very heterogeneous market. We have some of our legacy systems still being used by the consumers while they also have high end IP connectivity, optical fibre based connectivity, connected with some switch. So these kinds of customized requirements we are able to meet very effectively because we have total control on hardware and software of the products we deal in.
NDTV: And when we talk about market share of Coral, what is the market share of Coral right now and what are your plans for the coming years?
Tulli: The market space we are operating today is Rs 400-Rs 500 odd crore. Our market in wireless products is about Rs 30 crore and Coral has made major inroads in providing wireless radios.
NDTV: What are your plans for the coming year?
Tulli : We are looking forward to doubling our turnover. We should cross the Rs 200 crore mark this year.
NDTV: Do you go in for such kind of adventurous activities as this one in Solan, every year?
Tulli : We do these twice a year and we strongly believe it helps us build the team spirit and make people more creative at work. It also helps them get over the element of fear.
NDTV: So how does these kinds of activities fit into the profile of the company?
Tulli : Each time we do an activity like this we have a theme in mind like this time the theme was to get over fear because we are undertaking some large targets this year.
NDTV: Last year your target was Rs 100 crore so this time what is the target and how do you think these kind of adventurous activities will help you achieve that target?
Tulli : We have a target of Rs 250 crore this year and so we have involved the families and we want them all to feel and kind of own this target together.
NDTV: Do you think things like these, rafting together and then partying together, helps in the betterment of your employees to work harder and give better results.
Tulli : Yes of course we are doing it for a purpose and there is a reason for doing each one of these activities. We are trying to motivate our employees. Here we are also trying to motivate their families and involve them into the organization.
NDTV: Is it a very conscious effort to involve the family in these kind of activities?
Tulli : Yes of course that is by design and we make this conscious effort year after year and we try to involve family as much as we can. As I said we not only involve our immediate families but also try to involve our extended families like our parents, in-laws and other family members so that they all feel involved. It helps. It pays. In Coral we find the attrition levels at senior level is zero while in the industry the attrition levels are phenomenal these days.