News

Chirag Shah

Job Title: Founding Director of TradingParts.com (a provider of software for engineering component procurement sites)
Age: 31

WHEN WE SPOKE to Chirag Shah last year, supply chain software provider TradingParts.com had only recently been founded. Since then it has grown significantly, and has been pushing to establish leadership positions in the UK in its target sectors of vehicle manufacturing, consumer goods manufacturing and engineering, Shah says.

'Our greatest challenge in the last 12 months has been convincing companies that a new, entrepreneurial company can provide valuable business benefits to them. I think many large corporations in the UK are much more conservative than their US counterparts, and probably miss opportunities to gain competitive advantages.'

A defining point for the company was the crash of high-tech stocks in the first quarter of this year. Shah believes many corporations were confused by the huge number of software/ e-marketplace companies in the market and the recent shakeout has helped them to separate the wheat from the chaff. TradingParts now gets much more interest from clients simply because it survived and is growing rather than scaling back, he says.

'We still suffer slightly from what we call the "walking wounded". These companies, on their last legs, undertake desperate pricing measures in a last-ditch attempt to buy customers or earn marginal revenues to make the next funding round... But I think corporations are much wiser to these now.'