A Jeeves at your doorstep!

You are a P.G. Wodehouse fan. You start a business that is available when consumers need anything fixed. Any guesses on what you will name it as? Jeeves, of course.

That is what Alokeshwar Sen and his partners did when they started a business to provide professional services in the consumer durables market.

A mechanical engineer and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore, Alok had worked in the consumer durables sector for nearly 17 years before he ventured out on his own with R.N. Balasubramanya, to start Jeeves Consumer Services Pvt Ltd.

Jeeves’ first customer was the Future Group, which was buying a number of durables from China and wanted someone to test the products and service them across the country.

When it started on August 1, 2007, Jeeves had seven employees and one client. Now, it has about 30 customers that include top names in the consumer durables business – Toshiba, Sanyo, General Electric, Panasonic, Electrolux and Kenwood – and major retailers such as the Future Group, Croma, Metro Cash & Carry and the Aditya Birla group – and over 300 employees.

Customer interface

For retailers, Jeeves acts as the customer interface. It installs the appliances and demonstrates how to operate the products. For the white goods manufacturers, Jeeves is responsible for servicing products.

“You go to retailers and buy any of their store brands, it is a Jeeves person who comes and supports you with the installation and demonstration,” says the 48-year-old Alok, as we meet in a Café Coffee Day outlet in Bangalore. “The idea for Jeeves was to be a one-stop service support entity for any of your durables, any brand, any vintage, any part of the country,” he adds.

What started off doing installations and product demonstrations for major retailers has now become a company that provides after-warranty service for a host of consumer durables brands. Jeeves has now started offering annual maintenance contracts as its own product to consumers. The idea is to become a pan-India player in the consumer services business. Jeeves is now available in 225 cities, of which it runs the centres in 20 locations and the rest are with franchisees. “These 20 centres where we operate on our own account for 60-65 per cent of our total business,” says Alok.

Maintenance support

Jeeves now touches nearly 32,000 homes every month, or over a 1,000 customers on an average working day. And, most often customers would ask Jeeves whether it could help them out in repairing an old mixie or grinder or some such appliance. “If you go to a typical consumer home, there are 15 different products, of various brands, bought from various dealers,” says Alok. Of this, only those bought in the last one year will be covered by warranty. Following requests from consumers, Jeeves decided to launch an AMC on any product of any make.

“You take a cover (AMC) with us and tomorrow if you relocate to any other city, the cover will still be valid,” points out Alok.

The larger retailers pay Jeeves on a variable basis. For the smaller retailers, Jeeves supports them with a call centre and godown space. For them, there is a fixed charge and a variable charge. For products serviced after the warranty period, the customer will have to pay.

Biggest challenge

Alok identifies training the staff and inventory management as the biggest challenges. The employees have to be trained continuously not just on handling the products but on soft skills too. For instance, they must be trained to be sensitive to customers’ requirements – from taking off the shoes before entering the house to not touching the walls to going for service visits only at specified times.

Alok and his partner invested about Rs 46 lakh of their own funds in the venture. In April, Seedfund, which funds early stage ventures, invested in Jeeves for a significant minority stake. Alok declines to reveal the size of the investment or the stake that Seedfund picked up, but says the money will be used for expansion, recruiting more employees and putting the technology backbone in place. He expects Jeeves to end this year with revenues of about Rs 20 crore.

“It is one of those businesses where good times or bad times, we have a role to play,” says Alok. When the economy is doing well, people will buy more appliances and Jeeves will be called in to install the products. When things are down, people tend to hold on to the products and they may require servicing or repairs, points out Alok.

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