In a first for any Gujarat-based public sector player, Gujarat Alkalies & Chemicals Ltd (GACL) has introduced online order booking for the dealers of its caustic and other chemical products with an objective to bring transparency in pricing and efficiency in booking mechanism.
According to company officials, after the introduction of online order booking mechanism, dealers would get uniform price across the country for different products of the company. For this, GACL has launched a dedicated portal, which can by accessed through its website.
"Dealers are given user ID and passwords to access the portal. Initially, only five products are put up for online booking. Dealers can book any quantity through the portal based on the average of the orders placed in the past four months. Going forward, we are also looking to extend this facility for direct consumers as well," said M S Dagur, managing director, GACL.
"This is for the first time any state PSU has gone online for order booking. Traders and dealers have welcomed the initiative and we expect more and more dealers to join in a couple of months time," he said.
The portal was launched about two months back. The move is believed to save time to execute orders as well as avoid negotiations.
GACL's financial results for the second quarter ended September 2012 showed 78 per cent rise in the net profit at Rs 66.01 crore, up from Rs 37.06 crore in the same period last year. Dagur attributed the rise in profits to the company's efforts of streamlining financial discipline.
"Besides the online booking system, we have also taken several measures to strengthen our financial discipline, which has reflected in our second quarter numbers. We have been able to save on interests and reduce our working capital requirements to almost zero," said Dagur.