Mumbai
January 17th, 2008

One-month and three incidents of fire, two in the premises of partner's office and one in the premises of a leading national distributor. Looks like it is time for partners to pull up their socks and take the matter seriously.

Recently, a fire broke out in the corporate office of Mumbai-based Rashi Peripherals. The loss amounted to almost 30 percent of the total property. Ashu Mehrotra, Manager-PR and Events, Rashi Peripherals said, "The preliminary reports suggested that the fire was caused due to a short-circuit. Due to smoke and the smell, nobody could work in the office for the next two days. We then shifted to our office."

Not only property, but also loss of manpower and man-hours is a major setback caused due to fire. Though Rashi Peripheral's office was insured, and there were no casualties, it still suffered a major loss in terms of man-hours.

Another such incident took place in Panipat where the office of Ajay Singla, CEO, Computer City caught fire. The monetary loss was around Rs 3 lakh. Fortunately, there were no human causalities as there was construction happening on the floor. Singhla had to shift his office to one of his friend's premises and the time and money that he lost in the exercise was huge. Singhla said, "Now I have all I necessary precautions in place to fight with incidents such as fire and have established a separate pipeline and have purchased two fire extinguishers for the same."

The third incident that took place in the office of Devendra Taneja, CEO, PC solutions where set ablaze the entire floor, furniture, stationary, hardware, etc.
In all three cases, fortunately, there was no loss of servers, data and even manpower. Rashi Peripherals and PC Solutions had an insurance cover but Computer City suffered major losses, as his office was not insured.

Another question that arises is that when partners talk about secured, do they themselves realize its importance and deploy it in their own offices?
Talking about the precautions one should take Champak Raj Gurjar, MD, Maxtone said, "We have two fire extinguishers in our Lower Parel-based office. We also have four doors so that if a fire breaks out, the premises can be vacated easily. I have also set-up cables like that of Finolex, which are fire proof."
Another vendor Sandeep Parasrampuria, Director, Best IT World said, "I have started working and will soon deploy the best mechanism to fight fire. A fire extinguisher is very essential. I also plan to deploy cables that are fire proof."

Santosh Mhaske, GM, Data Care Corporation, Pune said, "We have recently launched our retail outlet. I made all arrangements to prevent loss through various incidents. We have fire extinguishers in all our office and outlets. Apart from that, we use the best of wires, which are flame proof and would dissolve if there is a fire but will not spark."

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