Desai Chemical Company, the store in Visakhapatnam that has supplied chemicals for many schools and colleges since the late 60’s is still going strong.
When the late Purushottam Dayaram Paramar, from Kutch, Gujarat came to Visakhapatnam in the 1960s to settle down here, he studied the market well. Deciding that it would be profitable to set up a shop selling chemicals, he established Desai Chemical Company in 1968. “At that time there was no shop in the city selling chemical company, and people had to get them from other cities”, shares Rashmi Chauhan, the person who runs the store along with her husband and 9 employees.
Making their mark as the first chemicals business in the city, Desai Chemical Company saw the market actually grow and change. In the beginning, they would supply chemistry related chemicals like acids, methanol, sodium chloride, chlorine etc. only to students in the Visakhapatnam district. However, over the years, they also started to supply both chemicals and equipment to several educational institutions in and around the city. Having made a name for themselves, customers started asking for their products from as far as Orissa and Chhattisgarh too. In fact, today their customers are from other countries too, especially South Africa.
Rashmi shares that there has been a huge change in the market over the years. Today their customer base has expanded to include hospitals, factories and pharmaceutical companies too. Supplying sodium metabisulphite for pickles and nitric acid to gold shops and finance shops for checking the purity of gold is another specialty. Talking about the backbone of their brand retaining its position even after all these years, she says, “We made sure that we maintained great relationships with all of our customers from the beginning.” The students of yesteryears, who were their regular customers, have gone on to become Professors and Principals of several colleges across the city, and continue to be loyal customers even today. Generations of customers still remain, and both fathers and sons come to the store.
The advent of the Internet has also helped boost business and play a key role in growth. Thus while locating the shop used to be a little confusing for customers back then, a click via Google maps easily brings customers now. Rashmi remembers an incident back in the years when a customer told them that he had to search for two days before he could finally locate the shop. Such is not the case anymore. She also recollects many other incidents of students who would come to their home early in the morning on the day of their exams. “They would have forgotten to get all their equipment, and we would supply it to them at the odd hours too. She also remembers people coming from the outskirts of the city late in the night, long after the shop was closed. They would want some equipment, which was at times difficult to obtain, but wherever the store could help, it did so.
With future plans for expanding the shop to make it bigger, a wider range of products will soon be added too. Also, tapping the power of the Internet further, Desai Chemicals Company will soon have an online presence through a website.
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