FROM selling bulldozers to hawking Russian vodka, Mumbai-born Kailash Gupta has done it. And he started early: At 16, he began selling bottled water to fund his studies. Today, his company Generation Next Communications distributes information technology (IT) products, mobile phones and consumer electronics in emerging markets across Asia.
The commerce graduate was always certain he wanted to be his own boss. He was inspired by his grandfather, who started a charitable school for girls in the Indian state of Haryana in the 1980s, at a time when female education was not a priority.
Gupta said: “I drew that inspiration from him to start doing something myself. I knew that I wanted to continue what my grandpa had done, and I’d be able to do all these things only if I was my own boss, so I never wanted to work for anyone.”
His entrepreneurship dreams got off to a start with a chance trip in 2003. He was visiting Hong Kong for leisure when he was invited to go with his brother-in-law, Rajesh Bhimsaria, on a business trip to Singapore.
Here, they discussed the idea of starting a company together. Generation Next Communications was born. It was not to be a new area of business, because Bhimsaria had already been distributing mobile phones and IT products in Hong Kong since 1997.
Now, Gupta is based in the Singapore headquarters as the company’s managing director and chief financial officer; Bhimsaria works out of Hong Kong as chairman and director.
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The company has group offices in six countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and logistics hubs in four territories, including Dubai and Hong Kong. It won its first Enterprise 50 award in 2021, and was placed again the following year; this year, it clinched fourth place.
Adding value
The group’s international presence today is a far cry from its humble origins. It began as a Singapore-based “box mover” – a company that packs and transports goods – for mobile phones and IT products.
The co-founders picked the Republic to set up shop due to the ease of doing business and its reputation as a safe investment hub.
Gupta said: “Brands did not have clear access into developing Asian countries like Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. So they needed box-moving distributors to be stationed in (places) like Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai to feed those markets.”
In the two decades since then, Generation Next Communications has recast itself as a value-added distributor.
Gupta said: “Somewhere around the year 2014 or 2015, we realised that the role of a box mover was getting more and more difficult – the margins were shrinking, the risks were growing, and the business wasn’t really promising the company any longevity.”
So the duo started to transform the company, taking it from being a traditional box mover to offering services such as marketing, demand projection and mapping out retailers in a given market.
Value-adding is not just about the services provided to customers. Gupta is a big believer in upskilling, and readily lends support to employees who are interested in furthering themselves. “It’s got to be an individual taking the initiative, because that is what will bring success.”
He cited an employee who went from loading goods in a warehouse, to his current senior sales management position, overseeing the Pakistan and Maldives markets from the company’s logistics hub in Dubai.
“He started learning on his own, liked it, and wanted to do more. We thought that he was capable of doing more, so we put him there,” said Gupta.
“We give opportunities to people if they want to shine and do something different.”
Pillars of success
Apple products account for more than 80 per cent of Generation Next Communications’ business, but the distributor also works with brands such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Dell, HP, VMware, Formlabs and Dyson.
Said Gupta: “We exist in every price bracket, so we are able to reach out to every consumer.”
He listed the five “pillars of success” in the company’s business model.
The first is channel development. This is the task of identifying retailers in a market, determining the potential of each one, then finding ways to reach out, to increase access to the market as a distributor.
“Channel development is not only reaching out to these retailers, but also looking at potentially which ones can be elevated to the next level … where they then speak with (a brand) directly,” said Gupta.
The second is distribution excellence, which entails the company stepping up to help retailers sell their products.
To accomplish this, the distributor has systems to track each retailer’s sales and to manage inventory efficiently.
“In Singapore’s context, the products that you sell in Orchard Road will not be the same as what is being sold in Little India or Kallang or Toa Payoh. You would cater to different sets of people and the demand would be different, so we track all these things.”
The third pillar is marketing, which covers a multitude of strategies – product placement, facilitating instalment schemes with banks, and offering training to partners.
The fourth and fifth pillars are affordability for consumers, and building robust financial, people and system infrastructure to support growth.
Going further
The company has no immediate plans to list or expand its overseas presence. Said Gupta: “I don’t think we have fully realised the potential that still exists in the countries in which we are present. Right now, we have to fully explore that potential.
“We are still in the growth phase.”
The company’s growth plans include expanding into a new area – electric vehicles (EVs). Generation Next Communications is in talks with a few companies and aims to distribute EVs in some markets by 2026.
Gupta acknowledged that this would be a very different play, but added: “It’s a longer-term project. I think it is at least two years away, and we will need those two years to build our infrastructure around it as well.”
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