Month and Year: October 1985
October brought the retreating monsoon rains to Chennai, turning the streets into muddy streams.
I arranged to meet Vikram at the Woodlands Drive-In restaurant on Cathedral Road, a popular hangout for businessmen and politicians.
I arrived early, wearing a simple button-down shirt and trousers.
Vikram arrived fifteen minutes later, looking stressed, holding a worn-out leather briefcase.
He recognized me from Rajesh’s shop, though he clearly didn’t understand why a teenage accountant wanted to meet him at an expensive restaurant.
“Vijay, right? Rajesh’s boy?” Vikram asked, sitting across from me and ordering a strong filter coffee.
“Rajesh said you had some freelance bookkeeping work for me.”
“I don’t have bookkeeping work, Vikram,” I said, looking him directly in the eyes.
“I have a company to build, and I need a qualified General Manager.” Vikram let out a tired laugh.
“A company? You’re a college kid. What company?, don’t joke with me vijay”
I didn’t smile.
I calmly laid out a detailed, ten-page business plan I had written out on legal paper.
It detailed the exact supply-demand gap of HDPE and PVC granules in the Ambattur industrial cluster.
It listed the international CIF (Cost, Insurance, and Freight) prices from Hong Kong versus the domestic wholesale prices in Madras.
It mapped out the required licenses, the projected profit margins, and the specific banking instruments we would use.
Vikram picked up the document skeptically.
As he read the first page, his posture changed.
By the third page, he was leaning in, his eyes darting across the numbers.
Being a former Citibank manager, he instantly recognized the professional grade of the financial modeling.
“Who wrote this?” he asked, looking up at me in disbelief.
“This is institutional-grade analysis. The Forex projections, the FERA compliance strategies… this is brilliant.”
“I wrote it,” I said.
“I have the capital to fund the initial operations. I have the market analysis. What I don’t have is the time to stand in line at the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) offices, nor the age requirement to legally sign certain bank guarantees without raising unnecessary questions. I need a frontman vikram. I know what happened to you at Citibank. You were screwed over by bureaucracy. Work for me, and I will give you the freedom to build this operation.”
“What’s the salary?” he asked after a long thought, his voice suddenly serious.
“You were making one thousand five hundred rupees at Citibank,” I noted, having already done my background check.
“I will pay you three thousand rupees a month. Double your salary. Plus a one percent profit-sharing bonus at the end of the financial year. Your first job is to register our company: Lakshmi Traders.”
Vikram swallowed hard.
Three thousand rupees (approximately two hundred and forty USD) was a massive salary in 1985 for a twenty-six-year-old.
It was an offer he literally could not refuse.
“I’m in. What do we do first?”
“First, we secure the licenses. Then, we set up the office,” I replied.
The next few weeks were a lesson in the absolute nightmare that was the Indian bureaucratic system of the 1980s.
To import polymer granules, we needed to fall under the Open General License (OGL) scheme, which allowed the import of specific raw materials without requiring a unique license for every single shipment.
However, getting an Importer Exporter Code (IEC) meant dealing with the DGFT.
Vikram proved his worth immediately.
With my capital backing him, he navigated the dusty government offices, greasing palms where necessary with fifty and hundred-rupee notes to move files from the bottom of the pile to the top.
He knew the clerks, he knew the exact format of the triplicate forms required, and he knew how to talk to the austere RBI officials to get the foreign exchange clearances under FERA guidelines.
While Vikram handled the paperwork, I found us an office.
I didn’t want a fancy office in Mount Road; I wanted to be close to my customers.
I rented a small, six-hundred-square-foot commercial space on the edge of the Ambattur Industrial Estate for eight hundred rupees a month.
We furnished it with basic second-hand teakwood desks, metal Godrej almirahs for file storage, and two heavy manual Remington typewriters.
The most expensive item was the rotary dial telephone connection, which required a massive deposit and strings pulled through my uncle Ragu to bypass the three-year waiting list for a new line.
By the end of October, Lakshmi Traders was physically established.
It was just the two of us.
Vikram sat at the front desk, typing out registration applications and vendor inquiry letters to petrochemical brokers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, using directories we sourced from the local Chamber of Commerce.
I operated from the back desk after my college hours, reviewing the daily expenses, analyzing the international polymer price fluctuations, and keeping a close eye on my stock market positions.
The framework was laid.
We were a registered entity with a rented office, a phone line, and pending import licenses.
The cost of setting up the office, paying the rent deposit, buying furniture, and covering government bribes and Vikram’s first month’s salary came to around fifteen thousand rupees.
October Transaction Summary:
Starting Liquid Capital: Thirty-six thousand rupees.
Office Setup, Deposits & Bribes: Twelve thousand rupees.
Vikram’s Salary: Three thousand rupees.
Total Liquid Capital at month-end: Twenty-one thousand rupees (approximately one thousand six hundred and eighty USD).
My cash reserves were dipping, but the infrastructure was in place.
I just needed my stock market play to mature.