Jubin Peter and Karthik Shivan from Qthree Ventures sat in an exclusive conversation with NewsX for its special segment NewsX A-List. Jubin Peter is Co-Founder & Chairman and Karthik Shivan is the Co-Founder & MD of Qthree Ventures and they discussed with NewsX about their business and venture offering retailing and existing models.
Jubin Peter started off talking about the company, “This is one of the largest consumer durable platforms offering excellence in omnichannel fulfilment, distribution and market growth. We want to be one of the biggest national distributors serving considerable brands, especially in the TV space and air conditioners. We continue to serve following the pillars of our organization, which is to reach people, and commitment. We have spread ourselves across the length and breadth of the country, representing several global brands.”
Talking about the reason behind starting Qthree, Karthik Shivan said, “Both myself and Jubin come with a lot of experience in the consumer durable market. So, once when we were just discussing starting something of our own. We decided about something which is in the same platform in the industry that we understand, so that was the main reason behind its start.”
Speaking of Qthree ventures take on Central Government’s Make In India initiative, Shivan added, ”As our Prime Minister says that Make In India aims to make our country self-reliant. When unless and until the startups in India, become self-reliant, it does not contribute to the economy of India. So that is a reason when we had this opportunity of manufacturing televisions, we took the first opportunity and we wanted to do something around that platform.”
Elaborating on the ease of doing business in India coming from a professional sector moving into entrepreneurship, Peter shared his insights. He said, “There have been a lot of systemic changes that have been happening around the business space in India. When we look 10 years back, the market was very different, prior to that it was again more unorganized but slowly we are moving towards a very organized structure. In India, thanks to several initiatives taken by various Central and even state governments, Make In India again as a big boost to manufacturers and maybe entrepreneurs like us. One of the major interesting parameters about integrity is one of the largest economic resurgent economies and it’s a very huge population to attend.”
“There are very few countries in the world with such huge domestic markets, so as not the number also themes at first catering to the domestic market completely indigenous view. So, there are several initiatives occurring in GSTs and imports and customs, even banking, so the entire ecosystem now forces us to evolve, in a more structured, more organized, more honest way. We really find the corruption is slowly moving up and clearing up in the system. All this enables us to look at a long term game. If you are venturing into Indian business now you should come with an aim to play it long and you should also aim to play clean,” Peter continued.
Sharing their future plans, Peter said “Thanks to the various people in the company and outside the company who have supported us in this journey. We had a wonderful stellar growth in the last seven years. We started as a regional distributor for a few brands and now moved on to be national distributors and we moved into the space of imports. Now we have become a manufacturer, we are in retail. Our vision, our mind and body got together since we started working on this as a venture. We always wanted to be in the space of electronics, but we wanted to be a vertically integrated ecosystem. So we always focused on being vertically integrated where we are from the grassroot levels of manufacturing to distribution, to domestic markets, to retailing to e-commerce and later also make for the world, which is exports.”
“We have successfully been able to touch base upon all these. Last seven years were primarily to develop strong foundations. We have always focused on creating strong foundations, and I believe we have done a fair job in creating the kind of foundations that we have infrastructure across the country. We have some great people who we have recruited from corporate. We also have figured out the platform to cater to different segments of income. So now it is easier to strategize and easier to execute. Henceforth, Qthree ventures will play a very significant role in space and consider we will be holding several licenses of several global brands and again we will be making it completely indigenously under the Make in India program, and selling it across the country,” Peter further added.
Sharing about how their professional background helped in understanding the market ecosystem and consumers better, Shivan stressed, “Our professional background has helped us to whatever we are today because that made us understand how retail works, how the factory works, how a brand has to be launched. We also understood how Indian consumers behave towards a brand. So, we are learning. Thankfully, both of us had a business orientation.”
“We took our job in the sense that one day we are going to open up businesses so we need to understand the job from the perspective of a business and ensure both of us are in touch. Throughout our careers, we understood how the market behaves and we have tried to implement the same thing into our business cultures,” Shivan further added.
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