With bank computerisation inevitable, the Bancal calculator P K Panicker makes could be living on borrowed time.

By Rakhi Mazumdar

Tucked away in a by-lane in Jadavpur in Calcutta, the registered offices of HK Industries sport a small, inconspicuous signboard. One flight up the three-storied building--and the buzz of activity sounds suspiciously subdued. Between receiving calls from customers, five young men and women are assembling a machine that is slightly bigger than a telephone. That's Bancal, the brainchild of P. Krishna Panicker, 54, who hopped coasts and jobs before deciding to make a special-purpose calculator for banks.

His calculations have paid off--for now. HK Industries has 60 employees, and expects to notch up a turnover of Rs 5 crore from the sale of 1,500 calculators in 1998-99. Granted, that's a long way from the Rs 9-lakh turnover that HK Industries reported in 1989-90, the company's first year of production. "When I set out on my own, I was convinced that electronic calculators were the only field I had any knowledge in," says Panicker. Unfortunately, that statement bears ominous overtones. For all his success, is Panicker dealing in a product that is becoming--if it isn't already--an anachronism?

Looking back, the choice was a calculated one since Panicker's working-life had revolved around those tiny machines. He had done an eight-year stint (1969-77) with Debsons, a Calcutta-based company that used to market the Murphy brand of radios as well as calculators from other companies. After that, Panicker joined the International Marketing Corporation as its regional manager in charge of marketing its electronic calculator, Quical. Remembers Panicker: "I had to look after everything in the Calcutta office. That helped me when I set out on my own."

The Big Idea came in 1988, when some of Panicker's banker-friends told him about their problems in clearing cheques and balancing funds because of the number of accounts involved. Wouldn't a special calculator help? Panicker agreed; after all, bank computerisation had only begun in a limited way in the metros. With practically no personal savings, and armed with just an idea, he, nevertheless, registered a small-scale unit--HK Industries became a private limited company in 1995--with a Rs 85,000-loan from the Bank of Baroda (BOB).

To fill the technology gap, Panicker approached a group of four young engineers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, who had just given up their jobs with the now-defunct Machinery Manufacturing Corp., which used to make electronic hardware. Panicker's plan appealed to the foursome--Partho Biswas, Kaustubh Kundu, Basudev Gupta, and Udit Mukherjee--who had set up their own company, Signotron India.

It took them almost a year to convert his idea into a product. What emerged from their labs in 1989 was Bancal, a microprocessor-based calculator specifically meant to execute the housekeeping jobs of a bank. Priced at Rs 9,990, the first customer for the Panicker-assembled machine was his banker, bob, which placed an order for 10 Bancals.

Says K. Venkatachalam, 50, the joint manager of the Chakraberia branch of the bob: "We faced a lot of arrears while balancing the ledger manually. But Bancal had a function which allowed one to balance accounts, and also create the master ledger and tally it with the general ledger. The machine could also tell us where errors had occurred while entering the data. These particular features were not available in the calculators our bank used to have earlier."

Still, besides that first order, Panicker managed to sell only a couple a month. And HK Industries' turnover that first year was only Rs 9 lakh--which more than doubled to Rs 19 lakh the following year. Emboldened, Panicker set off a series of product improvisations. What began as a calculator programmed to support the balancing of accounts evolved into a machine capable of handling jobs such as interest calculation for savings accounts, current accounts, and even fixed deposits.

In 1992, Panicker got his first break when the State Bank of India (SBI) said that it wanted a similar machine programmed to handle loans to the agricultural sector. Panicker pulled off a product extension, dubbed Bancal-Agri, by programming Bancal accordingly. And the SBI then picked up 110 Bancal-Agris. He followed this up with Bancal-Alpha, which has alpha-numeric options for savings accounts in branches of banks with around 10,000 accounts. And Panicker plans to introduce one more version of Bancal, with a built-in floppy disk drive and enhanced memory, soon.

Kaustubh Kundu, 40, director, Signotron, who has been closely associated with the development of Bancal, attributes its success to its ability to run on any kind of power supply. Moreover, Panicker's ability to focus on the customer has allowed him to stave off competition from rivals like the Delhi-based Methodex and the Mumbai-based Technic India, which have closed shop since. Points out Panicker: "Even the office assistant can fix this calculator if an engineer is not around."

Corroborates Kundu: "His competitors failed mostly because Bancal is well-engineered. And we were extremely focused on the market segment, not only in terms of sales effort, but also in providing customer support." Concurs Asit Chakravorty, 44, branch manager, Allahabad Bank, who has installed three Bancals in his Jadavpur offices: "For branches with less than 750 entries per day, Bancal provides a viable alternative. It is somewhat like a pre-programmed computer. But it cannot provide the details of inter-branch transactions although it is fed with all the relevant information. However, it is error-free."

Tragically, Panicker's real problem is that the Bancal-Agri has a price tag of Rs 24,000 while its upgrade, the Alpha model, costs Rs 37,000--the price of a no-frills PC. With total bank computerisation just a matter of time, the Bancals are more than likely to become useless soon. Ultimately, Panicker will have to move into the hinterland, supplying his machines to the rural and co-operative banks.

In short, Panicker's machines are simple, robust, and user-friendly. But they are unlikely to withstand the multi-functionality of PCs. Moreover, HK Industries' informal profit-sharing agreement with Signotron--which supplies it the all-critical motherboard--could also develop cracks since the latter has other interests, such as software exports, to nurture. With a low-technology product that is supplied to a user-base that will soon have a hi-tech substitute, Panicker needs another hop of faith to keep his ledger running. Or else, this start-up may soon shut down.

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