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How he started 10 firms in 10 years Vandana Gombar in New Delhi | June 21, 2006 "Put your finger there...and you can see the fingerprint captured on screen." I was distinctly uncomfortable with this test run on one of my fingers, which reminded me of horrid pre-incarceration movie scenes but Alok Kumar Agarwal was oblivious to that. He was excited about uploading tens of hundreds of such fingerprints - six from each person - for the National Skills Registry, earning a service fee in the process. The registry is a Nasscom-backed database aimed at giving confidence to international companies outsourcing to India who can know the employee. That is the latest service that Agarwal's decade-old Alankit group, which began as a registrar and share transfer agent, has added to its portfolio. Through 10-odd subsidiary companies - "it was a regulatory requirement" - Agarwal offers trading facilities for equities in the cash and futures market (BSE, NSE) and commodities (NCDEX, MCX), works as an insurance broker, processes cash-less hospitalisation claims as a third party administrator (TPA), has a facilitation centre for TIN (tax information network), is licensed to work as an e-return intermediary and also to offer portfolio management and investment advisory services, on a business model, which has similarities with peers like Karvy, Motilal Oswal and Geojit. Alankit has also gone international, having bought membership of the seven-month old Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange - "capital account convertibility (free exchange of currencies) will come in soon and I want to be ready" - where Agarwal has been back-patted for being among the most active trading members. It seems an unrelated business, but he tells me that retailing medicine - they have one store so far - is a "natural progression" for Alankit since such retail is also a service-led business. A chartered accountant by profession, and from a family of professionals, he invested his all - Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) in 1995 - to get into the service business because he knew it would expand. Today, with his debt-free group clocking revenues of Rs 40 crore (Rs 400 million), he talks about establishing a pan-Indian presence. That would require serious capital - about Rs 20-25 lakh per office (same as each Cafe Coffee Day outlet). Powered by  More Specials
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