As the carpet business wears thin, Rajan Mehta's start-up is back at the cross-roads, both locally and globally.

By Roshni Jayakar

What did the carpet say to the floor? You're covered! And what did it say to Rajan Mehta, the CEO of Zeba? You're flying!

Drawing its name from Zebaish in Persian--which translates into decor--Zeba designs, manufactures, and markets its carpets, dhurries, and home-furnishings all over the world. With 85 per cent of Mehta's turnover coming from exports, the 10-year-old company recorded sales of Rs 15.04 crore in 1997-98, earning a net profit of Rs 1.43 crore in the process. And its showroom in Mumbai, as well as Zeba's franchises in Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Cochin, Goa, Indore, and Kathmandu, accounted for the remaining 15 per cent of its sales. Smiles the 47-year-old Mehta: "It is all a question of timing."

And clarity of purpose. Almost two decades ago, in 1979, when he returned from England after studying accountancy, Mehta was adamant about not getting sucked into the family business of readymade garment-exports. He recalls: "I was looking for something that allowed me to travel widely, retain my links, and communicate with people overseas." So, he set up an interior design firm, B&S Partnership, along with a friend, Jimmy Ghaswalla. An early bird in the then-emerging business, the company immediately notched up a turnover of "a couple of lakhs."

In 1986, Mehta tumbled on to the export potential of floor-coverings (read: carpets), and decided to enter that business. Soon, he discovered that a large number of Indian exporters were actually plain old carpet-contractors. Hoping to leverage his understanding of the global market, he decided to head for Mirzapur, the heart of the carpet-belt in Uttar Pradesh. Setting up a small factory there, Mehta slowly built up a 100-member team of weavers, and other craftsmen, in the carpet capital. All on a seed capital of Rs 5 lakh, partly gleaned from the interior decoration business, with his family chipping in with the rest.

Thanks to the booming exports market for carpets, Mehta notched up a turnover of Rs 27.80 lakh in the very first year of operations, primarily exporting unbranded carpets to the US, the UK, Japan, and Australia. "My obsession with quality was an advantage," he says. True. Although headquartered in Mumbai, Zeba's people are hardly detached from their manufacturing outposts in Mirzapur, Delhi, Agra, Panipat, and Jaipur in North India, and the handloom-weaving centres in the South, like Karur, Bangalore, and Coimbatore.

Agrees Jimmy Ghaswalla, the "40-something" CEO of Jimmy Ghaswalla Associates, who designed the Zeba showroom for his old partner in Mumbai: "Although Rajan delegates, he does not abdicate responsibility, and participates in the process all along." For instance, weavers are notorious for taking long lay-offs at the drop of a dhurrie. Festivals, weddings, harvests factors utterly unrelated to the trade can throw schedules out of gear. Monitoring these unknowns at every step is part of the system at a company where every item manufactured is coded, customised, and labelled.

Says Canna Patel, 35, an architect at the Ahmedabad-based Hasmukh C. Patel, a user of the Zeba range: "Systems have been set up so that I, sitting in Ahmedabad and communicating through fax, can have the right product on schedule from Zeba." Finance has not been a problem, claims Mehta. As Zeba's business is an order-based one, its working-capital requirements are low. Of course, if the company needs large amounts of money, it borrows them from the commercial banks.

Only in 1992 did Rajan rename his company Zeba, which marked a strategic shift to the building of a brand, both internationally and at home. Explains Mehta: "The name-change marked the seeding of a dream to create a dynamic organisation." The same year, the boutique was opened in Mumbai, displaying an exuberant array of high-quality, hand-crafted, floor-coverings.

Zeba's positioning was designer-products at affordable prices. For instance, handwoven woollen dhurries priced at anything between Rs 756 and Rs 6,804, cushion covers from Rs 125 to Rs 550, hand-painted pottery in the range of Rs 650 to Rs 4,000, and upholstery fabrics priced at between Rs 150 and Rs 350 per metre. Says Melissa Baptista, 25, Executive (Marketing), Zeba: "We can make fabulous silk bedding- and dining-accessories and yet, we are less expensive than the others because we believe in the value philosophy." Concurs Patel: "While Shyam Ahuja sells what they have, at Zeba, the customer gets top priority."

In January, 1997, Zeba added the home-furnishings range. The idea: offer a co-ordinated package from hand-made carpets and dhurries to hand-painted pottery and lamp-shades. Thus, Zeba offers a total look for the home. Explains Rajan: "We saw that the world was becoming fashion-oriented. A shift was taking place, whereby a section of people wanted to improve their homes but didn't know how to put it together with a bit of colour and fun. We took our chance."

While the Zeba boutique has given Mehta visibility at home, exports continue to be his mainstay. His products feature in departmental stores such as Macy's, Robinson's, and Bloomingdale's as well as in leading stores such as Pier I and Pottery Barn on both sides of the Atlantic. Although Zeba products also feature in mail-order catalogues, such as Otto and Spiegel, the company's ambitious gameplan is to develop the brand by setting up shops-in-shops abroad. Claims Mehta: "We are seriously looking at the wholesale and the retail business, both here and abroad."

This change is being driven by the diminishing growth of carpet exports from India thanks to the tough norms in the West on the use of child labour, and a shift in consumer preferences from hand-made to synthetic carpets, which are easier to maintain. While India's hand-made carpet exports fell by 7 per cent in 1997-98--from $437 million to $406 million--in 1998-99, they are expected to fall by at least another 1.50 per cent next year. Counters Mehta, who has both the Kaleen and Rugmark certificates for his products: "I still believe there is potential. Moreover, the Western norms are for hand-knotted carpets while we make hand-tufted ones."

Counters Sundip Manaktala, 35, Director, Cosmque, another carpet-exporter: "This has become a niche market, with customer polarisation globally. It is an issue of survival as competition is intense." In addition, because of the intense rivalry from the traditional carpet-exporting countries, such as Iran, China, and Pakistan, the international market is tough to break into. Hopes Ghaswalla: "Mehta thinks big and then, achieves his goals without letting anything dampen his spirits."

Walk into the offices of Zeba, and you will see that every employee's desk bears a placard with a single motto, Count On Me. That's exactly what Mehta will need to do if he is to carpet-bomb the world. Quite literally.

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