Delhi Office - Beginnings

As the in-charge of the Delhi office, my immediate focus was to acquaint myself with the market in Sadar Bazar. Delhi office was not setup to generate income for the family business. It was merely a procurement branch for the Amritsar shop - not for too long though.

At the time, there were only two factories in India that manufactured Gunny bags, needles, and crochet hooks. One of them, owned by Sardar Bhagat Singh, produced high-quality products despite being a small manufacturing unit. Sardar was a good friend of Bauji, and his only competitor had a unit that was 100 times more productive.

During one of his visits to Delhi, Bauji ran into Sardar's belligerent competitor, who was boasting about his ability to annihilate Sardar's unit due to his superior production capacity. However, Bauji remained nonchalant and reached out to the competitor's customers, offering to fulfill their orders in case the big guy was ever unable to do so. Some of the customers who were vexed by the big-guy's monopolizing attitude, were charmed by Bauji's disarming humbleness and started placing orders with us. We fulfilled them through Sardar's unit in record time and celebrated them. This was the beginning of Delhi office leading to become an income center as well!

Three of us, I, Tayaji and my helper lived in the office itself. There was a office room and a toilet. The assistant not only cooked, but also helped pack the business goods and deliver them.  We used to bathe at the well in the middle of the market. We made racks out of the empty goods boxes. Every morning, I used to go to the market alone when it was still closed. Despite the challenging living conditions, I had fallen in love with the market streets which were narrow with peculiar zigzag pattern. In a few days, I captured the market's blueprint; every shop, every pothole, every shopkeeper, the sweat and the scents.  I was determined to establish a strong presence there; I was home again.

 Babu ji's trip to Bombay for a marriage proved to be an opportunity for the business to expand further. He took samples from Bhagat Singh and received a good response from potential customers, which encouraged him to expand to other cities like Patna, Lucknow, Kanpur, and beyond.