Arjun felt this past three hours were the most difficult hours after his rebirth but it was necessary to do so as hiring good managers was vital for the factory to progress in a good manner.
Arjun and Bhargav came outside the interview room to meet up with Srikanth Reddy who was waiting for them in the waiting area. Arjun thanked the agency secretary paid the fee for arranging all the interviews and lending the office and headed to the nearby coffee shop with the other two.
Once they were done with ordering their coffees and introducing themselves informally Arjun started to talk about the reason he had asked Srikanth to stay back for.
He was relieved he had brought the sketch book with him as he wanted his new production manager's opinion on the packaging of the dairy beverages.
Arjun first explained their concept and informed Srikanth that most machinery would arrive at village within next two weeks and showed him the various designs he and his mom had already made to Srikanth and Bhargav.
Arjun could not decide which route to take for the packaging. In his past life most dairy beverages were either packed in plastic pouches or thick paper cartons. He felt both were good but wanted more opinions on this matter as he couldn't judge properly because of his future bias.
They both felt the plastic packaging was very attractive at least from what they could see from the designs Arjun had shown them and the carton designs too were good but did not have the easily transportable feel the plastic sachets gave. Bhargav even mentioned about the ease of delivery if they chose the plastic sachet route.
Srikanth too remarked it would be way cheaper to do the transportation in sachets rather than cartons as these stuff had to be transported in a cool environment which was a very expensive for this time and transporting in sachets would save considerable amount of space.
Arjun too felt these both made sense but plastic bags were considerably expensive during these times as there were no proper pipelines for the bags of sizes they wanted and had to be custom made which would mean it could be considerably even more expensive.
Still he wanted to get quotes from both plastic making factories and carton making factories before taking the decision. Arjun instead asked about the designs and asked if they would suggest any improvements for the current design.
The designs for both of them were very simple as Arjun just used generic designs of butter milk packets from his past life as the inspiration for the designs, making the packets in simple white and blue color for the package and color matched them to other flavors.
The only difference was rose milk which had some rose background to make it more appealing to children and young women.
Bhargav and Srikanth liked the design with background much more and suggested to use the same philosophy for the other two packaging too.
Arjun also felt this idea was doable and remarked he would do so as soon as he returned to the village. Once they were done with the discussion and their coffee they headed to the factories together to get the quotes based on the quantity they wanted.
Srikanth too followed along as he did not have much to do on the holiday and he wanted to get more into the good graces of his new boss and with his new boss being a kid he felt it would be a simple job but as he spent more and more time with Arjun he felt that might not really be the case. Even some of his previous bosses were not as perceptive as Arjun so he remarked to himself to be careful in front of this kid in the future.
Since there was only one plastic pouch production factory in Vijayawada at the time they headed there. Arjun wanted to get the quotes from the factories at Madras as there would be more options available there but as his trip was more than a month away Arjun had to settle with the local producers for now.
Hanuman Packaging factory was the only packaging factory in in Vijayawada and although it was the only one in the entire surroundings the scenes there were very dire from what Arjun could see.
They were lead directly to the factory M.D after they informed purpose of visit to the security personnel at the gate. As Arjun walked through the factory all Arjun could observe was workers idling around which confirmed his earlier suspicion about the struggling conditions of the factory.
Padma Rao who was the managing director invited three of them to sit at the negotiating table after he learned they were here for quotations from the security people.
Arjun broke the ice first and mentioned they were going to start a new dairy beverage factory and were looking for plastic pouch quotations for various sizes like 200ml, 500ml and 250ml packages.
Padma Rao did not offer the rates instantly but asked for the designs of the pouches and mentioned more colors would mean higher rates as printing multiple colors would take up more time for the factory.
Arjun showed him their concept designs which impressed Padma Rao a lot as he felt they were very ahead of the current times and the factory could use these designs to attract other customers by showing off these designs.
He observed the colors and made some rough calculations first before asking Arjun about the quantity of the order.
Arjun thought for a while and mentioned they could do with one lakh pouches for start and promised to place more orders depending on the market reaction. Arjun felt one lakh packages were already stretching themselves a lot as it would mean more risk without getting the market approval but since he had already bought the initial machinery required for over twenty lakhs, spending twenty to thirty thousand for the first order was okay.
Padma Rao's eyes lit up after hearing about the order quantity and he made some more calculations before offering quotation of thirty cents a piece for 200ml pouches, thirty five cents a piece for 250ml and sixty cents a piece for the 500ml pouches.
Arjun was okay with the prices he was being offered but wanted to negotiate more and started getting up mentioning he wanted to get quotes from the glass bottle factory and carton pack factories before making the final choice.
Padma Rao who was looking forward to the big order immediately panicked and instantly slashed the rates by five cents for every size of pouches remarking if Arjun could get better quotes from anywhere else he would purchase them for free.
Three of them who were ready to leave sat back down after Arjun felt this was already the best quotations he would receive as he had already done his market research prior to this.
Even Arjun knew getting the same quotation from factories in Madras would be very tough. After some more discussion he even managed to convince Padma Rao to bring down the price of 500ml pouch to fifty cents a piece.
After getting the prices he was satisfied with Arjun asked for sixty thousand of 200ml pouches, thirty thousand of 250ml pouches and ten thousand of 500ml pouches which together cost around twenty nine thousand rupees.
Arjun handed Padma Rao a cheque for twelve thousand for start and seventeen thousand rupees had to be paid once the delivery was done.
When Padma Rao asked for the designs though Arjun asked for a couple days time as they had to refine the details further and took the factories fax number and telephone number for sending the designs once they were ready.
After they were done with the negotiation the three took their leave while Padma Rao invited them to have a stroll around the factory but as they had already seen some parts of it and did not find anything interesting they left without the tour.
Once they were out Arjun sponsored the dinner for all three at the mess where they usually had their food after which Bhargav accompanied Srikanth to the local bar as he wanted to celebrate his recruitment while Arjun returned to the hotel and redialed Vinod's village number but got the same response of him not being available.
When he tried to reach out to Sumanth at the studio nobody picked the call so Arjun had reasoned they had already gone on the trip Arjun was sponsoring.
Disappointed Arjun went back to his home and went to sleep as he was already very tired from the hectic day especially the three hours of interview took the toll on him.