Consulting · Procurement · Industrial rubber · Mumbai
An 8% price gap, and a buying process that let it happen.
The short version
Zenith Rubber has made industrial rubber since 1965 — rubber sheets, wear-resistant rubber for mining, flooring, EPDM waterproofing, coated fabrics and inflatables. It is family-owned, works across India and the Middle East, and runs its head office at Nariman Point with factories in Dombivli and Ras Al Khaimah. Debox has worked with Zenith since October 2024, across growth planning, procurement and organisation design.
Zenith buys from nearly a thousand vendors, from imported raw materials to local repair contractors. Management asked whether it was paying fair prices, and whether the buying process was strong enough to keep them fair. We studied a full year of spend, reviewed the process end to end, and agreed with management which vendors to test. We then asked those vendors for quotes as an outside buyer and compared them with what Zenith paid.
On the spend we could test, Zenith was paying its current vendors about 8% above market. Switching some items to better vendors adds roughly 3% more, for a total opportunity near 11%. About 4% has already been saved and the remaining 7% is in the pipeline. Not every gap was a problem — some higher prices had good reasons, such as extra processing or payment terms.
First, decide what is worth testing
An audit that checks everything checks nothing well. So before asking for a single quote, we mapped a full year of spend and agreed with management where the risk actually sat.
Spend was very concentrated. Raw materials made up about two thirds, and six categories made up more than nine tenths. Nearly half of all spend went to a small group of import vendors. Repair, maintenance and logistics held almost half of all vendors but only a small share of spend.
We then sorted every vendor into three groups: set aside, for spend management already negotiated directly or that could not be compared, such as utilities and government bodies; standard check, to be tested against the market in the normal way; and closer look, where management wanted a deeper check on prices and terms.
That cut the scope to about a fifth of spend and under half the vendors. We tested categories in order of their impact on production — raw materials and maintenance first, admin purchases last.
Check everything and you find nothing. Check the right fifth and you find the gaps.
Asking the market
A vendor prices an existing customer on the relationship. It prices a new buyer on the market. So we approached vendors as an outside buyer, without naming Zenith, and asked for quotes on items Zenith already bought. Frequent, high-value items came first.
We tested about three fifths of the spend in scope directly. The rest — imports, very small purchases, technical or custom items, and spend outside the purchase team’s control — was handled through alternative vendors where possible and through the process changes that followed.
On the spend we tested, the result was consistent: Zenith was paying its current vendors about 8% above market. The gap was largest in repair and maintenance at roughly 20%, then admin at 11%, consumables at 9% and raw materials at 6%.
We checked every gap with Zenith’s team before negotiating. Where the gap was real, the reasons were often simple. One vendor had not passed on a fall in plastic prices. Others lowered their rates as soon as they saw competing quotes. On the largest consumable item the current vendor cut its rate by about 11%, and moving part of the volume to a new vendor took the total saving to nearly a fifth.
Put a market quote beside every price, and you know exactly what you are paying for.
What got in the way, and how we got past it
The biggest hurdle was trust. In raw materials, many vendors would not quote without knowing who the customer was, which held back about two fifths of the spend we set out to test. In repair and maintenance, roughly a quarter of spend needed site visits or drawings before anyone would price it.
We got past it through targeted conversations rather than repeated enquiries — speaking to vendors directly, explaining the requirement and the volumes, sharing specifications and following up until we had a like-for-like quote. In many cases vendors that first declined came back with a price. Overall about half of all enquiries returned a usable quote from vendors approached as a new buyer.
Where a vendor still would not quote, we used alternative vendors to establish the market rate another way. Every gap was then reviewed with Zenith’s team before it became a negotiation. Some turned out to be fair — extra processing on the material, or payment terms that changed the real price. That protected good vendors as much as it found expensive ones.
A gap is not an accusation. The goal is a clear reason behind every price you pay.
What it produced
How to read this
All figures come from Zenith’s purchase records and the quotes we received.
Agreed and in the pipeline are different. Agreed savings are signed-off rates. Pipeline savings are gaps still being negotiated by Zenith’s team. We report them separately and keep them out of the headline.
Percentages are of tested spend, not of Zenith’s total purchases, most of which was outside scope by design.
A gap is not an accusation. Some higher prices had good reasons. We only negotiated gaps that held up after review with Zenith’s team.
How ~8% becomes ~11%. The 8% is the gap against current vendors at market rate. Moving some items to better vendors adds about 3% on top, so the full opportunity is near 11%, of which about 4% is already agreed.
Who did what. We ran the benchmarking, the negotiations and the new vendor search. Zenith’s team approved quality, placed the orders and is taking the remaining savings forward.
Writing the rules last, not first
By September 2025 savings were agreed, new vendors were being onboarded with the purchase team, and the remaining opportunities were handed over with the evidence behind each. The purchase team had new reporting lines and new people in several roles.
Only then did we write the SOPs — deliberately last, so they reflected what the audit had actually found rather than what a process ought to look like in theory.
The categories hardest to test — items without full specifications, or with a single vendor — got the strictest onboarding and approval steps. In 2026 these SOPs were reviewed, rewritten where needed and moved onto 100 Ops, so they run as tracked workflows rather than documents.
A better price lasts a contract. A better process keeps paying off for years.
What we now build in from day one
Specifications come first. The hardest items to benchmark were those without full specifications. A clean item list, with specifications for everything bought regularly, is now the first control we recommend.
The big categories get their own strategy. Most spend sits with import vendors or relationships managed at senior level, and logistics needs a different buying approach altogether. This audit focused where it could move fastest — the long tail of vendors and the process. The large categories are next.
A further 7% is still in the pipeline. The savings being negotiated now are larger than those already agreed, and the purchase team is taking them forward with the evidence for each.
If you are about to audit your purchasing
Do not check everything. Map a year of spend, agree which fifth carries the risk, and test that properly — approaching vendors as a new buyer, because a vendor prices a relationship differently from a market.
Then write the rules afterwards rather than before. SOPs drafted at the start describe how buying is supposed to work. SOPs written at the end describe what the audit actually found, which is the version worth enforcing.
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Measurement note. Scope and methodology are from our own project records. All figures come from Zenith’s purchase records and the quotes we received, and percentages are of tested spend rather than of total purchases. Agreed savings are signed-off rates; pipeline savings are still under negotiation by Zenith’s team and are reported separately.
