M Purushoutham
A warm person with an unshakable faith in himself, Nikhil M Shah from Mandar (Rajasthan) of Million Electric Co. did get most things right in his incredibly entrepreneurial journey of 15 years, including naming his organization such that it lights millions of custom-made fixtures across the length and breadth of India, as also in interesting parts of the world!
Million Electric, his dream baby today, wasn’t in existence when he started his entrepreneurial journey.
A serial school drop-out for no other reason than sheer boredom of trying to learn something never to be used in life, dropping out of school came as a great relief given that he was then free to do what he loved most: Business! Starting with industrial products of various kinds 15 years back to even trying his hands at processing used tyres to derive diesel using a process called pyrolysis (which took him to China to bring back a boiler measuring 80 meters or 262 feet in length!) to doing odd jobs to making specialized PET bottles these days and successfully running a dairy farm!
Two words thus describe him best: Serial Entrepreneur, though he would like to be called a social entrepreneur who loves exploring what there is to learn, and in the process, earn for himself and those around!
What he may have lost in school, he certainly more than made up in his entrepreneurial journey, which taught him about things as diverse as chemistry, physics, human psychology, loads of maths, and most of all, empathy towards others in a situation!
Having tried things early in life, his entrepreneurially journey found its defining moment when he came across lamps, lights, and things luminous! Charmed by their sheer range and possibilities, and the fact it involved being with people, he made them an important part of his entrepreneurial portfolio. His innate sense of picking things technical only helped. The start was with supplying standardized products like LED panels, spotlights, and downlighters, which he still does countrywide. To an existing product range of 400 items, he added COBs, fabric lights & fabric-oriented lights in large numbers three years ago. The latter additions came about as he found standardized products mundane and not challenging enough.
In either case, he buys most components from China and assembles them in India. This, he reasons, is because making these in India in the present, despite our apparent expertise, would be more expensive given that the Chinese have built massive capacities and are in the position to change output overnight to cater to different tastes and preferences.
India, he reasons, is still a market of traders where our old-style bargaining and haggling holds. Things though are slowly changing with production capacities being set-up here for light-related components though it may still take time to meet the Chinese challenge head-on.
Where he fits in, in a field dominated by big names and bigger imports, is by being in the right space. Million Electric has placed its products squarely between the A & B segments with A being premium and B, affordable. Their products have the looks of A at the price of B! Mixing and matching looks with technical details, they derive products that serve everyone’s purpose, be it about looks or price!
Where Million Lights remains a million miles ahead of competition though is in the area of ABSTRACT LIGHTING! Anything abstract gets Nikhil drooling! Irrespective of the scale of work (like a single lamp measuring 8000 sq ft and consuming an astounding 13000 watts part of the fabric-oriented lights for Phoenix world school, Olympiados, which measured 60 feet) he knows for a fact that he alone can get it up and lit! More the technicality, the higher the chances that he alone can do it. His forte includes lighting synced to acoustics (done for a 10000 sq ft pillarless auditorium!). These days their long linears are a rage with hyper-markets and place needing large-surface lighting. Shortly there would be flex & wi-fi based lighting to be followed by lithium-based wireless lighting using zig-bee technology and meant for the seriously well-heeled.
Towards the end of 2019 would come the final coup, something entirely unheard of in India, which Nikhil and everyone at Million Electric want at the moment to be held close to their chest for obvious reasons! But grand it would be!
His ability to create exotic light fixtures out of filament bulbs sees the well-heeled walk up to his door-step to sample from 20 variants, of which six (6) are in full bottle form!
Ask him about marketing, and a smile of satisfaction lines his face! He says work attracts work! People seeing their creations, feel inspired to try even more daring stuff. And as always, he complies!
With his demeanor being the same, be it for a millionaire, his employees, friends, or a stranger on the street, people like him immensely and have come to depend upon him in increasing numbers. Never one to take the “take it or leave it” route, everyone close to him is by default part of his extended family! Conversely, if there is something he cannot do, he takes his full time to understand the reason before saying NO. A “No” then remains. The “No” thankfully doesn’t happen very often with Nikhil!
Million Electric did have dedicated salespeople but found the old way of referrals and good work more reliable. Digital Marketing, they did try a while back with mixed results.
With his kind of work, you would expect Nikhil and his team to be loaded with awards and recognitions. Surprisingly, he has very few. That’s because he never networks for work! He faces challenges after challenges which ups his worth among his clients and the world! The Million Electric way of working has been acknowledged by many architects who know that if it is Nikhil Shah, they can rest assured of work being of a very high order!
As for the future, Nikhil has it clear that Million Electric shall remain the Numero-Uno in specialized lighting, taking up increasingly complex lighting assignments besides informing clients of all the available alternatives & designing and producing individualized solutions. They want to be there for the client to explain to them what Million Electric and the industry can do for them in the present and the future!
Is he great at planning his moves? In reality, he does not envision beyond a week and takes his work each day as it comes while doing his best. And this he has done all through his entrepreneurial journey and hopefully into the future. That besides, the one thing he has kept intact is a positive work environment & pattern of working, which shall remain the same irrespective of how many people he employs. If there is/ are opportunities, he shall take every effort to crack it while staying in the present.
As a service provider, Nikhil loves the experimenters among his clients who do so irrespective of budget or space constraints! From a thousand Rupees & 1-BHK to a crore Rupees and 6-BHK or an entire neighborhood, school, or industrial shed, he has helped them all. And in great style. He reasons that if there is a want, he shall find the WAY! But for that, there ought to be a WANT!
In all this, Nikhil has one condition for all his clients, that they visit his office. Once there, it’s far easier for him to understand their needs and make the right suggestions. With time and experience, he has found the right pace to understand and explain to the client what he has to offer in a step-by-step manner with technical details in place. With rough drawings and drafts in place, he has executed quite a few projects in under a week of the client’s visit!
Quiz him on what he attributes to his success, and he puts it down to passion, dedication (minus over thinking about time), and, most of all, finding the right price niche! He isn’t into big margins. Things that otherwise cost INR 30-35 lacs he has done for INR 15-20 lacs knowing fully well the price difference and not hiking his margins. In doing so, he has managed to retain his clients who have gone ahead and become his salesmen!
In his line of business, those below him, i.e., his employees matter a lot, towards whom he remains ever open and humane without letting the past affect the present and future. He wants them to explore and learn – even at the cost of incurring inadvertent losses. Without the fear of being victimized, his employees have done exceptionally well in the past. As for losses incurred, he brings it before them explaining the possible reason and where the threshold lies. He does not micro-manage his employees’ work and let them build strategies by consensus. If he finds their approach mostly correct, he allows them to continue. If not, he guides them so that they go the right way. In any case, he does not give them all assistance and has kept their numbers low to avoid them becoming complacent. All this gets them to explore and do things on their own. Otherwise, he reasons, how would they grow? To him, results finally matter. If his employees can derive solutions, he is more than happy! With so much time and effort that he spends on them, he sees them as part of his family and grooms them accordingly.
His one expectation from his staff is that they be street-smart. Learning and exploring do work, but according to him, the thing most needed for survival is street-smartness with the ability to read clients’ minds.
Money does have its value in life, but what matters more to Nikhil are the values themselves! Going after money, he reasons, leads nowhere high. One might as well move to a slower and less polluted place where one can live happily with his/ her core value being intact instead of always trying to acquire more. A Merc today and a Rolls-Royce tomorrow may signify financial growth. But does that equate to personal and emotional growth and happiness from being close to family and friends? Most likely, not!
With so much having come his way, what is it that drives him? A will to do things, and do them well! He reasons that most youngsters get bored, not knowing what to do next. That’s till they find that one thing which tells them that they too have it in them. It’s finally one’s own spirit to grow, learn, and progress that turns things in one’s favour. Help from family also helps. In Nikhil’s case, help came in the form of unstinted support from his father, Shri Mahendra D Shah, through all of his entrepreneurial journeys! A person of good standing in society, the latter saw through his son’s condition and never held him back; instead, he always boosted his courage to do better.
Despite the otherwise positive outlook and the way people perceive his products and services, things in the recent few years have been anything but positive. One of the biggest reasons has been the general slow-down in the economy. A buyer these days thinks twice before spending even 100 Rupees. For Nikhil it means working-capital issues with money stuck in unsold stocks and payment to his suppliers. Some months back, Million Lights wanted to launch a product, but still isn’t sure if it would be a success. He also realizes that had they been manufacturers like the Chinese, the slow-down would have been disastrous for them.
He is both pessimistic and optimistic about the coming change. Optimistic because we are growing, and demand WILL be there. Pessimistic because specific sectors of the economy, which gave Million Electric huge businesses, are completely down and out, like the realty sector.
Despite the otherwise gloomy outlook, he does envisage the need for external assistance with capital to grow his business and plans to approach bodies formally when the right opportunity in terms of demand and the right technology comes across. Expertise, he reasons he has in plenty and could be his biggest USP!
His take on business and life : “Do humane business for humans. Make money but not by fooling people. If you show value, you will always have clients!”
info@millionligting.in
www.millionligting.in
Business Icon
Add comment