In this article
An electrical RFQ needs seven fields: exact part number or full specification, quantity, required-by date, delivery location with PIN code, GST treatment expected, brand — or an explicit statement that equivalents are acceptable — and the quote validity you need. Miss any one of these and the quotes that come back cannot be compared without a follow-up call.
Most purchase executives already know this. What they do not always do is write it down in a form that five different vendors will interpret the same way, and that is the whole game.
The seven fields
1. Exact part number, or a full specification. “MCCB 100A” is not a specification. It is the beginning of one. You need the breaking capacity, the number of poles, the release type, and the make if you have a preference. If you have the part number, give the part number — it eliminates ninety per cent of the ambiguity in one line.
2. Quantity. Write the actual quantity you will order, not a rounded-up figure to get a better rate. Vendors quote against slabs, and an inflated quantity gets you a price you cannot then buy at.
3. Required-by date. Not “urgent”. A date. “Urgent” means different things to a dealer with stock and a dealer who has to indent, and both will tell you they can manage it.
4. Delivery location with PIN code. The PIN code changes the number. Freight from a Bengaluru godown to a Bengaluru site and freight to a site in Odisha are different costs, and a vendor who does not know where it is going will either guess or leave it out, and both are bad for you.
5. GST treatment expected. Whether you want the rate inclusive or exclusive, and your own GSTIN so the place of supply is correct from the start.
6. Brand, or an explicit equivalence rule. If you will accept an equivalent, say what equivalence means to you. See below — this is the field that carries the most money.
7. Validity required. How long you need the quote to hold. Seven days is usually right. It is long enough for you to compare and decide, short enough that the vendor will quote you a real rate rather than a padded one.
Why “or equivalent” needs a rule attached
“Or equivalent” is the most-used and least-defined phrase in Indian electrical procurement.
To a buyer it usually means: same function, same rating, reputable make. To a vendor it can mean: anything I can get that will pass a casual inspection.
Both readings are honest. They just produce very different quotations, and you cannot compare a quote against your specified make with a quote against somebody’s interpretation of equivalent unless you said what equivalent meant.
Attach a rule. Something like: “Equivalent acceptable if breaking capacity is equal or higher, terminal capacity accommodates the same cable size, and the make is one of these three.” Four extra lines in the RFQ. It converts an unusable spread of quotes into a comparable one.
For switchgear specifically, the parameters that actually have to match are the breaking capacity, the duty rating, the terminal capacity and the mounting envelope. Current rating alone is not equivalence, and two breakers with the same ampere number are frequently not substitutes.
Quantity, and getting the slab price
Vendors price against quantity slabs. What most buyers do not do is ask where the next slab starts.
One line in your RFQ — “please also quote the next price break, with the quantity at which it applies” — costs nothing and occasionally saves a lot. Sometimes you are eleven pieces below a slab you would happily have reached.
The reverse also applies. If a vendor quotes a rate that requires you to take a pack size you have no use for, that is not a better price. It is inventory you have agreed to carry on his behalf, and it belongs in the landed-cost line rather than in the rate.
Delivery location, honestly
Put the full delivery address and the PIN code in the RFQ, not just the city.
Three things change with location: freight, the tax treatment if it crosses a state line, and sometimes the lead time, because a vendor’s stock may sit in a different branch from the one you are talking to.
If the delivery address is a site rather than your registered office, say so explicitly and give both. This is the single most common source of place-of-supply errors on the resulting invoice, and place-of-supply errors are what break input tax credit months later.
Validity, and why short is better
A long validity looks like it helps you. It does not.
A vendor asked to hold a price for thirty days in a market where copper and steel move will pad the rate to cover that risk. A vendor asked for seven days will quote closer to his actual number.
If your decision genuinely takes three weeks, the honest move is to ask for seven-day validity and re-confirm when you are ready, rather than asking everybody to price in three weeks of uncertainty upfront.
A template you can copy
Plain text. Paste it into an email, a form, or a platform RFQ field.
RFQ — [your firm name] — [date] Item 1 Part number / specification: [exact part number, or full spec] Make: [brand] — equivalents [acceptable / not acceptable] Equivalence rule (if applicable): [e.g. equal or higher breaking capacity, same terminal capacity, make from: A, B, C] Quantity: [number] [units] Next price break: please quote, with the quantity at which it applies Item 2 [repeat as above] Delivery Delivery address: [full address] PIN code: [pin] Required by: [date] Site or registered office: [which] Commercial Our GSTIN: [gstin] Rates required: [exclusive / inclusive] of GST Freight: please quote [included / to pay], and state the amount Quote validity required: [7] days Payment terms offered: [terms] Please include in your quotation: - Net rate per unit after discount - HSN code - Freight amount and terms - Dispatch date if PO is released by [date] - Stock position at time of quoting Contact: [name, number, email]
That is the whole thing. It takes four minutes to fill in and it is the difference between five comparable quotes and five conversations.
Things to leave out
Your budget. You will get quotes at your budget.
The other vendors’ names. Telling vendor A that you are also asking vendors B and C is fine and normal. Telling him what they quoted is how you end up with a market that stops quoting you honestly.
Emotional urgency. “Need this immediately, please treat as top priority” in an RFQ that also says required-by date is three weeks away teaches the vendor to discount your urgency permanently.
The one mistake that costs the most
It is not vagueness. It is sending a well-written RFQ to three dealers who all sell the same make.
The quotes come back close together, you conclude the market price is settled, and you never find out that a functionally equivalent part from another manufacturer was available at a different number entirely. We see this constantly and we see it from good buyers. It is not carelessness, it is habit.
Send the same RFQ to at least one vendor outside your usual brand, even when you fully intend to buy the usual brand. If nothing else it tells you what your loyalty is costing you, and sometimes the answer is nothing, which is also worth knowing.
Related reading: How to compare two quotations when the brands are different · How to read a switchgear quotation · Where the days go in electrical procurement
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