‘Innovation is the key to move forward’

INDUSTRY & LOCKDOWN

RAGHAV KOHLI, owner of Shrey Sports, said the pandemic has taught him a lesson that diversification is important and innovation is the key to move forward. In an interview with Aakanksha Bhardwaj Kohli said the main product of their firm is a cricket helmet and a number of players from the Indian cricket team, including Virat Kohli, Mahender Singh Dhoni, Shikhar Dhawan and many International players wear Shrey Sports helmets. He shared the challenges he faced amid the pandemic and his plans ahead. Excerpts:

How is your business doing amid the pandemic?

No doubt, the business has been badly affected. We never thought that one day people would stop playing cricket and that too in India where cricket is like a religion. The pandemic has affected our business too.

What are the main issues at this point?

Our 50 per cent of the orders have already been cancelled and right now we are only exporting to Australia and New Zealand. The courier companies, air consignments as well as sea consignments are taking more than double the time they usually take. These are the issues that we are facing at this point of time.

What lessons have this pandemic taught you?

At the moment, we are completely dependent on cricket but one lesson this pandemic has taught us is that innovation is the key to move forward and we need to diversify into new products as well. We are looking at developing more products in the country and are planning to expand our business in other sports fields as well.

Now that everything has gone online, do you plan to adopt this method too?

We already sell our products online. But now we will now switch to online business. Owing to the lockdown, our payments from the domestic market did not come, but one can always pay online no matter what are the circumstances. So, this is what we are planning to do now.

Did you also face shortage of labourers?

We faced the shortage of labourers earlier and we struggled for a couple of months but from July onwards there was no problem related to labour as such.

What relief did you get from the government?

I have an office in England too. There the government has helped a lot and they have paid 80 per cent of my employees’ salaries every month. Here we were given a little relief when we did not have to pay fixed minimum electricity bills for two- three months when there was a lockdown.