Mr. Vichare is the founder and managing director of Vichare couriers. He started Vichare couriers in the year 1996 with a capital of Rs.50, 000. Today, after nearly 11 years, it’s a 30 crore company and it has become the first choice of Mumbai for courier services. This commerce graduate from Siddhartha College of Commerce started his courier business without any prior experience in courier services. His family was very supportive and they had full faith in him and as a result he faced no resistance from his family.

In the nineties, the Indian Postal Department was dominating this market and angadias were the only other players in the market. The service provided by the Indian Postal Department was inefficient and it used to take them three to five days to deliver a letter within the city and the problem with angadias was that they were highly disorganized. Mahendra wanted to cash in on this opportunity by providing efficient and timely service at reasonable price.

He set up his shop and came up with the concept of ‘next day delivery’ and that too at the price of Rs.3.00 per letter, the same price that the Indian Postal Department used to charge. In the beginning, customers thought that they were fools and that they had no sense of business. But Mahendra was confident and he knew that an Indian customer is always sold on value. Their first assignments came from charity organizations and clubs, especially Rotary club. Mahendra managed to cultivate good relations with the members of the club, who later on became his corporate clients. Later, a contract system was also started for corporate clients at cheaper rates.

One customer from central Mumbai unwittingly helped Vichare couriers in getting popular. This customer considered their business sense extremely foolish but he also used to send hundreds of parcels every day through Vichare couriers taking advantage of their low prices. This helped Vichare couriers in reaching many homes and people started recognizing them.

The company started with seven people and today has nearly 3700 employees at around 90 locations. Vichare couriers has a fixed clientele of 17000 customers and they deliver around 1, 50,000 letters every day. Vichare couriers are planning to expand their operations to Pune and Nashik, with no plans to spread their wings across the country.

Mahendra’s most important asset is his people and sometimes he is not able to hide his emotions when they leave him. Some of his employees have left him to start their own courier business. Mahendra prefers to stay low-profile because he thinks that being in news every time also has its own disadvantages. Well his business style is also a little different, he is not at all interested in getting funds or bring out IPO for expanding his company. He doesn’t believe in franchisee network or tie-ups. He says, “being a Mahrashtrian, whatever I earn I invest that in business”. So, whatever is in his pocket will be invested in the business.

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