The last 4 decades have been a long journey for the Eros Group as it grew from a single retail outlet selling Hitachi appliances at Deira, Dubai, to a corporate entity employing over 1000 people. While they grew, they also pursued the path of outsourcing, as evident from Niranjan Gidwani, Group Senior Vice President, Eros Group, who said, “Outsourcing helps to fill the immediate need and we prefer tweakingthe variable costs rather than fixed costs; thus outsourcing people made immense sense for us”.
 
The Eros Group has grown year-on-year and now handles other brands such as Aiphone, Candy, Funai, Lennox, Samsung, Taurus, and Termobreak. Still the legacy of initial days remains as Vaneeta Chhugani, Deputy General Manager, HRD of Eros group says, “Hitachi is still our flagship project. We have increased our basket of offerings from Hitachi over the years - originally from big appliances to kitchen and small appliances”.
   
Eros Group is part of the Badri Group which owns over 10 companies. Eros specializes in the electronics sector and uses multiple channels to market its products. Some brands such as Samsung and Hitachi are sold through their own 31 retail outlets and other power retail outlets, whereas Funai (LCDs) is sold to hotels directly and Candy (kitchen furniture) is sold to architects, real estate agents and other corporates. The wider approach has helped the company to venture in multiple directions. Vaneeta happily says, “We always look for innovative ways to sell our products and extend benefits to our end consumers”. Coupled with this is the recognition that merchandisers are a key factor for their good performance, as “60-70% of purchase decisions are made in the retail outlet and merchandisers are instrumental in this process. We have mastered the art of merchandiser-management”, says Gidwani.

Vaneeta laughed and shared her candid views when we tried to explore the reasons for their association with Dulsco over the last two years. She said, “From an HR perspective, having employees on our payroll is preferable, however we realized that outsourcing helps in flexible manpower planning. Dulsco had similar values and thought processes as us, hence we felt comfortable going ahead with them. I personally liked the good documentation and paperwork of Dulsco which reflected its professional approach and process orientation”. She also appreciated Dulsco’s training programmes for merchandisers as they bring added value to the table. She encouraged four supervisors from Eros Group to be part of these training programmes.

The relationship of Eros Group with Dulsco is more of a partnership than a client-vendor relationship. Eros had also utilized the waste management services of Dulsco for four months. “We have participated in the ladies volleyball tournament held at Dulsco Village - The Events Arena. We really appreciate these recreational tournaments,” says Gidwani. According to him, this partnership will continue as long as retailing continues in the GCC landscape. “The ability to handle this relationship together will help in strengthening it in the future also”, expressed Gidwani.