Gold Matrix Resources

BY HIS own admission, Mr Pinaki Rath's field is a "big boy's game, an exclusive club where membership fees are at a premium and entrance costs are prohibitive".

Nevertheless, the managing director of metal trading firm Gold Matrix Resources remains upbeat about the potential of his company and the prospects in the industry. Mr Rath, 38, set up the company in 2005 and clinched his first deal 10 days after setting up shop.

"What helped us was the confidence in our ability and the goodwill of our business associates," he recalls.

That deal spurred him on to carve out a name in the competitive world of metal trading. Involved in the trading of base metals, Gold Matrix Resources scours the globe for nickel, tin, aluminium, copper, lead and zinc, and supplies them to the Indian market.

"The sourcing is typically from resource-rich countries, while hedging of these metals is done through the London Metal Exchange (LME)," Mr Rath explains.

End-users are in such diverse sectors as the steel, construction, chemical, packaging and electrical industries.

Thanks to 14 years of experience in the Indian base metals industry and good ties with metal producers, LME brokers, warehouses, shipping lines, insurance companies and commodity banks, Gold Matrix Resources is able to buck the industry trend and operate as a one-stop shop, streamlining the process of metal trading for lower cost and greater efficiency.

Mr Rath explains: "The trend is for traders and producers to supply the physical material, and the bank and brokers to assist in hedging. We intertwine these roles, thereby creating a single-window contract for clients. This is an approach yet to be tried out by any trading house in India."

In the last financial year, with a staff strength of four and about 24 customers, Gold Matrix Resources achieved a turnover of US$120 million (S$174.37 million). Mr Rath says: "The customer base may not look large but we would rather embed ourselves with our customers and grow qualitatively. Customer acquisition is usually by word of mouth rather than hard selling. In fact, we are yet to recruit a salesman."

The hands-on chief does not see the need for multiple overseas offices either. "In the age of the mobile office, we operate out of Singapore but work in multiple time zones," he says. However, Mr Rath travels once a month to India and hopes to start a branch there within one year.

"One of the reasons for our success is that we do not see business in a binary way - right or wrong, profit or loss, long or short, high or low. We do not come down heavily on failures. All we try to do is learn the lesson," he says.

The ultimate goal is "to make sense of the changes taking place and continuously adapt to sustain one's growth in an unforgiving business environment".

A milestone which Mr Rath is especially proud of is being awarded the Global Trader Programme status by International Enterprise Singapore last year, in recognition of the company's business plans and growth prospects. "This is usually given to international trading companies of repute and promise. Rarely has a company got this award so early since its inception," he says.

An e50.startup award, he says, is "an acknowledgement that our business model is sound, especially because we were audited by a team of experts. That gives us some assurance that our compass is working".

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