FACE TIME: IPL RETAIL GROUP

Garry, Robby, and Gagan Sawhney are the brothers behind IPL Retail Group, which manufactures, imports, and distributes to more than 1,500 customers throughout Australia. They were born in India and moved to Australia with bold ambitions. This is their story…
Garry, Robby, and Gagan Sawhney, are three young and passionate brothers born into a close-knit family in the small city of Ambala, India.

While growing up, they knew they didn’t want to ‘work for the man’ and instead, they dreamed of overseeing their own destiny and career. Robby and Garry are both engineers and Gagan is qualified in commerce and IT, but the brothers say that their ambitions were always too high and their dreams too big for their hometown of Ambala.

Robby started his Australian dream in 1999. He came with the purpose of finding his place in the world and becoming somebody who could set an example and be an inspiration for others back home. He has always been very active in sports and most of his time spent away from work is either with family or playing cricket with his mates.

Robby is married and has two beautiful and intelligent children. He started his life in Australia from scratch and with very little experience, and making it to where he is today has taken a lot of hard work and patience.

Today, Robby can proudly say that he has more than 15 years of experience in the retail industry. He has two pieces of advice that he has carried through from his early days of managing several gas stations, as it’s from there that he learned his business skills. His first piece of advice is to “keep things simple” and the second is that “it’s all about the customers”. He says that you should seek to find good customers, invest in them, learn from them, and look after them.

“I look after the marketing department in IPL Group and IPL Retail, and in recent periods of growth over the past few years I have been driven by both meeting the ever changing needs of consumers, and by driving existing and new business harder,” says Robby.

Garry is the elder of the brothers and came to Australia in 2004 after handling all of his responsibilities back home. He is an enthusiast, an avid traveller, and a movie buff, and in his initial days of struggling to adapt to his new life in Australia, he kept his spirits high by watching movies. He loves having a great conversation about the latest Netflix show over a coffee.

A man of God, Garry has always been very spiritual, and devotes his time to those in need. He is married with two sweet and bright young children who he loves more than anything in the world.

Garry looks after operations at IPL Retail Group and makes sure that the business is always running smoothly. In his career, he has gained more than 12 years of experience in the retail industry. He says the highlight of his career was when the people in the industry who he previously looked up to as mentors, started coming to him for advice.

“I am truly fortunate for all the success that life has given me and am grateful to my God for everything,” he says.

Gagan is the youngest of the three brothers and he came to Australia in 2013. He looks after IT development and product sourcing for IPL Retail, as the head of import and purchase.

“Our goal as a business over the coming years is to continue to refine and master our specialised field to be the undisputed expert in all of Australia. To constantly improve the service and performance levels of the team, their knowledge and expertise, and most importantly, to keep our customers happy,” he says.

Gagan describes his life as “a beautiful juggling act”. With one beautiful child at home, he says his home life revolves around Lion and Peppa Pig, and maybe a chilled glass of beer at the end of the day.

“My family certainly keeps me busy outside of work, but I love every minute of it.”

The Sawhney family owns several businesses across several industries from service stations to real estate. But the brothers’ biggest venture of all is the IPL Retail Group, which they describe as “a giant in the field of wholesale”.

The real goal for us is to keep providing our customers with solutions; so, when customers tell us that we’ve made a difference, that’s more rewarding than anything we could ever personally achieve.
IPL does wholesale distribution to petrol stations, convenience stores, post offices, tobacco shops, and major retail stores around Australia. They offer hundreds of items from categories including technology, mobile accessories, sunglasses, soft toys, reading glasses, caps, footwear, exotica fresheners, hats, socks, bandanas, and more. They provide their customers with high quality products with an emphasis on pricing, quality, and top notch customer service.

In 2020, the brothers decided that the business needs to be more organized and structured than the ‘typical’ entrepreneurial business. Fiduciary and corporate governance would be needed to manage the business as well as to embrace the future opportunities and to be able to move in the corporate circles that the business was headed towards.

With the combination of three brothers, all experts in different areas; from business planning, forecasting and analysis for assessment of revenue potential, to overseeing industrial and institutional marketing operations, developing strong relationships with supply chain partners, risk management and liaising with key government and private authorities for securing seamless business, they know the ins and outs of their business at the tip of their fingers.

The brothers say that in five years’ time they would like to still be doing what they’re doing now, with continued development of investing in SKUs for local and international marketplaces.

“2022 and beyond is an exciting time at IPL Retail Group and we are looking forward as to how we can continue to develop our brands, teams, and innovation. Australia’s retail industry is one of the key contributors to the country’s economy and has been on a continuous growth trajectory since 2004. Online retailing is one of the faster-growing channels of distribution in the country, owing to high urbanisation rate and the growing e-commerce shoppers in Australia.

“For us, it’s not so much about what we want, it’s about what we can help our customers achieve. As cliché as that may sound, that’s truly the most rewarding part of our business.

“The real goal for us is to keep providing our customers with solutions; so, when customers tell us that we’ve made a difference, that’s more rewarding than anything we could ever personally achieve.”

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