By Smita Krishnaswamy

SINGAPORE'S courier king V.S. Kumar is still delivering strong business results - with fresh branding, state-of-the-art online customer services and plans to expand abroad.

He proudly declares that his home-grown courier company, Network Courier, has not laid off any workers in its 20-year history, including during the recent downturn. He is committed to keeping that record intact.

Mr Kumar used other methods to deal with the downturn, such as salary freezes and staff redeployment.

Although business slowed in the recession, Mr Kumar, 46, said he has seen some signs of recovery over the past two months.

The firm, which delivers documents and packages domestically and overseas, now has more than 170 employees. Its number of daily deliveries has shot up to about 10,000 from 7000 in 2007.

When The Straits Times featured Mr Kumar as part of the SME Spotlight series in 2007, he was focusing on automating the company's processes and planning for international expansion.

Since then, he has brought his plans to incorporate information technology into Network Courier's daily operations to successful fruition.

A custom-built system implementation, in the works for 10 years, culminated last year in an online system which customers can use to request deliveries, track their packages and print invoices.

The system automatically notifies delivery staff of their upcoming deliveries via SMS, and enables barcode verification of completed deliveries that are uploaded automatically to the customer portal.

Mr Kumar said he has received a lot of positive feedback on the project from customers. 'It really cuts down on a lot of their manual work, and highlights our promise of reliability,' he said.

Mr Kumar now wants to attract more individual customers by launching a stored value 'saver card' next year, targeted at ad hoc users of courier services. The card will allow customers to use all the services Network Courier provides at the discounted price offered to contract customers.

The firm is also focusing on becoming a one-stop shop for regional visa applications.

It takes care of validating application forms, document submission, visa validation and customer delivery for a small fee. The service, launched last October, covers Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, China Thailand, Vietnam and India. Mr Kumar is looking to add more countries to this list.

The last time The Straits Times spoke to Mr Kumar, he was planning to expand internationally through franchising.

But owing to the economic situation, he put those plans on hold. 'Before we went for franchising, we felt it was better to improve our brand image,' he said.

Mr Kumar said his goal is for Network Courier to become a household name in Singapore, similar to iconic local brands such as Singapore Airlines.

He took Network Courier through a full-scale branding exercise last year, focusing on standardising operating procedures as well as marketing materials. The company was the winner of the Established Brand award at the Singapore Prestige Brand Awards 2008, organised by the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises and Lianhe Zaobao.

Network Courier is now exploring locations for expansion, and wants to start with neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

According to Mr Kumar, when Network Courier expands overseas, he wants to be able to woo potential franchisees with a strong Singapore brand, a complete technology solution, and a well thought out franchise model.

He does not want established companies as franchisees, but prefers to help ambitious individuals such as he was 20 years ago. 'The idea is to build an entrepreneurial culture,' he said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.