The Agarwal advance was a life-giving infusion, but it came with strings attached—strings that quickly tightened into a noose of logistical nightmares. Scaling from a proof-of-concept batch of eighteen to a full production run of two hundred was not a linear process; it was a qualitative leap into a new world of problems.
The first bottleneck was the most fundamental: people. Rahim was tasked with rehiring the rest of the original Nova Electronics workforce. But a month of unpaid idleness had scattered them. Some had found other, more reliable work. Others, their trust shattered by Swami, viewed Rahim's offer with deep suspicion, assuming Patel Holdings was another fly-by-night operation that would vanish once the order was done.
He managed to bring back ten more, bringing their total to twenty-five assemblers. It was enough to man two full production lines, but it was a far cry from the smooth, experienced crew he'd once led. The new hires were rusty, their skills dulled by uncertainty. The meticulous standards Deepak had set for the prototype began to fray at the edges under the pressure of volume.
The second bottleneck was the supply chain. Deepak's quest for a reliable tape mechanism supplier led him to a small, precision engineering shop in Pune. The quality was impeccable, the owner was a perfectionist who understood tolerances. The price was 30% higher, and the lead time was three weeks.
"We don't have three weeks," Harsh stated, looking at the production schedule pinned to the wall. The Agarwal wedding was an immovable deadline.
"We use the local supplier for half the order," Deepak argued, his face grim. "We test every single mechanism before it goes on the line. We build in the extra inspection time. It's a risk, but it's the only way."
It was a brutal compromise. It meant their QC process, which should have been a final check, now had to be a full-time, pre-assembly diagnostic stage. It slowed everything down.
The third and most unexpected bottleneck was space. The Kandivali plant, which had felt cavernous with fifteen people, was now claustrophobic. Two production lines crammed into the space meant workers were elbow-to-elbow. Stacks of components, packed in their anti-static foam, encroached on the assembly area. The risk of static discharge or mixed-up parts skyrocketed.
Harsh found himself not managing a factory, but conducting a symphony of controlled chaos. His days were a blur of triage:
· 9:00 AM: A meeting with Rahim to review the previous day's yield. Forty units assembled, but seven failed final audio check due to a bad batch of resistors from a new, cheaper supplier Deepak had been forced to use. Decision: Scrap the resistors, halt the line for four hours until the trusted supplier could make an emergency delivery.
· 1:00 PM: A shouting match with the Kurla workshop foreman over the next shipment of faceplates. The foreman was demanding payment for the last order upfront. Harsh refused, citing their previous quality issues. The call ended with the foreman hanging up. Crisis: A key component was now in jeopardy.
· 3:00 PM: Sanjay, buzzing with nervous energy, reported that Merchant's stores had sold out of their initial thirty units in a week. He wanted to place a reorder for fifty. Harsh had to tell him to wait. Every single player coming off the line was already spoken for by Agarwal. They couldn't feed their first retail success.
· 6:00 PM: Deepak approached him, holding a player that had passed all checks. He looked uneasy. "Listen," he said, handing Harsh the headphones.
The music was perfect. But when Harsh turned up the volume to maximum, there was a faint, high-pitched buzz. "It's the power amplifier," Deepak said. "It's on the edge of its tolerance. It only happens at max volume, with certain tapes. Most people will never hear it."
Harsh thought of Agarwal's discerning clients. He thought of their reputation.
"Scrap the entire batch that uses this amp,"he said, his voice tired but firm. "How many?"
"Twenty," Deepak said softly. Another ₹40,000 in components and labor, wasted.
The financial pressure was immense. The Agarwal advance was being devoured not by profit, but by the exorbitant cost of ensuring quality at scale. The ledger told the story:
Agarwal Order (200 units)
Revenue ₹4,40,000
Cost of Components ₹2,10,000 (with premiums)
Cost of Labor ₹80,000
Cost of Rework/Scrap ₹45,000 (and climbing)
Projected Profit ₹1,05,000
Reality A net loss when accounting for overhead
One evening, Harsh stayed late at the plant long after the workers had left. The silence was a stark contrast to the daytime din. He walked the production lines, past the half-assembled skeletons of players, the bins of rejected components, the QC station with its pile of failed units.
He felt like a general who had won a famous victory only to find his army exhausted, his supplies depleted, and his territory too vast to hold. The "first break" had been a trap. Success was a more demanding master than failure.
He picked up a rejected main board, tracing the delicate tracings of copper with his finger. This was the heart of it. This tiny, complex piece of engineering was where the battle was won or lost. Not in boardrooms or on sales calls, but here, under the hot lights, with a soldering iron and a critical ear.
He couldn't scale by sheer force of will. He needed a system. He needed process. He needed to stop fighting a hundred small fires and build a fireproof building.
The next morning, he gathered his weary generals: Deepak, Rahim, Sanjay.
"We're changing tactics," he announced, his voice leaving no room for argument. "We are not building two hundred players. We are building one perfect player. Two hundred times."
He laid out new rules:
1. No new suppliers. They would pay the premium for the Pune mechanisms and the trusted component vendors. Reliability was cheaper than rework.
2. The line stops for every fault. If a worker finds a bad component, the entire line stops until the batch is isolated. No exceptions.
3. Sanjay's sales are frozen. No new orders until the Agarwal order was shipped perfectly and the production process was stable.
4. Rahim is promoted. His title was now Plant Manager. His pay was increased. His responsibility: to be the final arbiter of quality on the line. His word was law.
It was a declaration. They were sacrificing short-term growth for long-term survival. They were choosing to be a quality manufacturer, not just a volume producer.
It was the hardest decision he'd made since facing down Swami. He was turning away money, stifling momentum. But as he saw the relief on Deepak's and Rahim's faces, he knew it was right.
The siege wasn't about conquering new territory anymore. It was about fortifying the ground they held, brick by painful, perfect brick.
(Chapter End)