Month and Year: Late May 1985
Liquid Capital at Start: Rs.
5,000
After my 12th board results were published and the celebrations died down, I knew that a golden chance to increase my cash flow was imminent.
It was late May, and the college admission season was about to hit Chennai like a tidal wave.
Tens of thousands of students from all around Tamil Nadu would soon migrate to specific prestigious colleges around my area—like Presidency College, Pachaiyappa’s College, Vivekananda College, and Loyola College—for admission results, application processing, and registration.
During this frantic period, stationary items like application folders, pens, staplers, adhesive stamps, and standardized paper were the most desperately needed commodities.
As a former financial analyst, I understood the core principle of retail arbitrage: find a severe geographical supply-demand mismatch and bridge it for a premium.
I knew exactly where in Sowcarpet and Parry’s Corner to source cheap stationary in massive bulk quantities.
Specifically, Anderson Street and Bunder Street in the George Town area were the undisputed wholesale stationary hubs of South India.
First, I needed to maximize my seed capital.
I had accumulated around Rs.
5,000 from my savings, salary, and recent gifts.
I took the 8-gram gold chain my uncle Ragu had gifted me for my birthday and went to a trusted local Marwari pawn broker in Mylapore.
I explained I only needed a short-term loan.
I pawned the gold chain for Rs.
1,200 at a standard monthly interest rate.
This brought my total working capital to Rs.
6,200.
The college admission process in 1985 was entirely manual and highly bureaucratic.
Students had to stand in long queues in the sweltering Chennai summer heat to buy physical application forms, fill them out with black or blue ink, attach passport-sized photographs with liquid gum, tie their document copies together with cotton tags, and place them in specific brown heavy-duty folders.
If a student forgot a pen or a folder, they would lose their place in a queue of five hundred people.
I took my Rs.
6,200 to Bunder Street.
I negotiated directly with the wholesale stockists.
I bought blue and black ink pens at 40 paise each, which I could easily sell for Rs.
1.50 or Rs.
2.00 at the college gates.
3.00.
I bought large bottles of liquid gum, dividing them into smaller plastic vials, and procured thousands of cotton document tags and standardized writing paper.
For the next four weeks, my routine was brutal but highly efficient.
I woke up at 4:00 AM to do my newspaper delivery rounds, finishing by 6:00 AM.
By 7:30 AM, I was stationed outside the gates of major colleges.
I didn’t just sit on a mat; I hired two local neighborhood boys for Rs.
10 a day to help me cover multiple college gates simultaneously.
I organized my inventory into ready-to-use “Admission Kits” containing one folder, two pens, a small vial of gum, and cotton tags.
I priced the kit at Rs.
10.
The cost to me was barely Rs.
2.50.
Desperate parents and stressed students bought the kits without a second thought.
“Brother, one kit please,” a father sweating in a cotton shirt told me outside Pachaiyappa’s.
“I forgot the gum and the clerk sent me back. You are a lifesaver.”
“Here you go, sir. Ten rupees. Good luck to your son,” I replied, pocketing the cash.
The turnover was incredibly rapid.
Every three days, I took my gross revenue back to Anderson Street to reinvest in more inventory.
I was compounding my capital multiple times a week.
I tracked every single penny earned and spent in a small ledger I kept in my shirt pocket.
Transaction Details:
● Initial Capital: Rs.
6,200
● Wholesale Purchases (Week 1): – Rs.
6,000
● Revenue (Week 1): + Rs.
14,000
● Reinvestment (Week 2): – Rs.
10,000
● Revenue (Week 2): + Rs.
● Reinvestment (Week 3): – Rs.
15,000
● Revenue (Week 3): + Rs.
38,000
● Total Gross Revenue: Rs.
77,000
● Total Inventory & Labor Costs over 4 weeks: Rs.
31,000
● Net Profit: Rs.
46,000 (I kept prices high as demand peaked, maximizing margins).
After a grueling month, the admission frenzy died down.
I sat in my room and counted the cash.
My initial Rs.
6,200 had exploded into a gross cash pile of around Rs.
46,000.
It was far more than my initial conservative estimate of Rs.
20,000, simply because I managed to restock and flip the inventory much faster than anticipated using the two hired boys.
The very next day, I went straight back to the pawn broker in Mylapore.
I handed him Rs.
1,200 principal plus the minimal interest accrued over one month, which was around Rs.
36.
I remitted the gold chain and put it back around my neck.
It was an invaluable gift from my uncle, and keeping it safe was a matter of principle.
Final Liquid Capital Balance: Rs.
44,764 (I rounded my operational capital down to Rs. 44,000 for easy accounting, setting aside the rest for household and personal expenses).
I had secured my first real financial war chest.
It wasn’t millions, but in 1985, Rs.
44,000 was the equivalent of nearly two years’ salary for a mid-level government employee.
The foundation was laid.