Came To Chennai With Hundred Rupees, Now Owns A Mobile Phone Service Chain With A Turnover Of Rs 3 Crore

Born as the sixth child of nine siblings in a small village in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi district and admitted to a home at the age of six, P Balasubramaniam will get a chance to visit his family only during the holidays.

His mother, a secondary class teacher in a government school, was the only earning member in the family, and he lost his father, a small-time politician in their village when he was 12 years old.

He was a regular student and left the hostel without finishing 12th grade. He graduated with a degree in air conditioning and refrigeration.

At the age of 18, he arrived in Chennai after an argument with his mother, a small bag containing several hundred rupees and some clothes in his pocket.

"I had no purpose. I had no one to guide me," said Balasubramaniam, 39, founder of First Call, a Chenab mobile phone repair chain.

First Call has seven stores and has about 25 employees, many of whom are technicians who repair all types of smartphones. Employees wear uniforms, and shops are painted bright red and white, giving the space a corporate look.

Balasubramaniam started its first store in 2009 with a single technician, plus he and his wife, who spoke with customers and filled out worksheets.

"I invested 2 lakhs in the first store in Adiyar." The first six months were difficult and there was hardly any income to cover the rental costs and the technician's salary. But then the business started and I continued.

His journey from rags to riches began in Chennai in 1998 when he enrolled as an apprentice mechanic on a monthly stipend of Rs 500. private accommodation, a small room shared with another person.

“I fought a lot,” he remembers. "I went hungry for many days, and on other days I ate rubbish as the main meal. (Rice porridge is a trash pile made of boiled rice, soaked in water, dumped to ferment overnight, and eat the next day with curd., spicy pepper, or onion)."

Sometimes his mother and older brother, who found work in Singapore, would send him money to help him meet some of his needs.

About six months after arriving in Chennai, Balasubramanian got a job as an air conditioning executive at a software development company with a salary of 2000 lei. He was responsible for the maintenance of the central air conditioning system at the office, where he saw young IT professionals being paid home.

“I realized the opportunities available to educated youth. I felt sorry for myself that no one had told me about these opportunities when I was studying, "he said, adding," I cried many times when thinking about my situation. 

But a year of working at a software company gave him an insight into the good life he never saw as a boy, who spent most of his childhood in a farmhouse and village.

His search for a better life triggered, and the boy, who until now only dreamed of being an AC mechanic, had a fire in his stomach to make it great in life.

Balasubramanian’s next job was in an internet cafe, where people surrendered on the internet for 100-150 rupees per hour.

“I used to create email IDs for customers, teach them to chat on Yahoo and scan,” he says recalling life in Chennai in the 1990s when the Internet was still stuck.

Surfing and chatting on the internet was very popular for young people flying to internet cafes at the time, as few people were able to make an internet connection at home that required a computer, a phone, and a high monthly rental. 

The 1990s also came to an end when cell phones became affordable for more and more people, and many of them discarded their cell phone cleaners.

The boom in mobile phones has brought much-needed progress to Balasubramanian. A person working in a mobile phone shop near his workplace advised him to take a cell phone repair service course for a profitable career.

The man also referred him to a training institute in Lucknow, where a Balasubramanian completed a three-month training course. In Lucknow, he stayed with the owner of the institution, who held him in high esteem.

“I spent about 20,000 rupees on the course. My brother gave the money, ”says Balasubramanian, who set up a mobile service center in Colonel Parry when he returned to Chennai, always with financial support from his brother.

“It was 10 by 10 feet,” he says. "The rent was 3,000 rupees and I invested the same amount in the tools - a hot blow machine, a welding machine, a screwdriver, tweezers, and a few other tools.

However, this effort was short-lived because the assistant he employed had no experience with mobile hardware - an area he did not know as software as his forte.

However, this job was short-lived because the assistant he hired was incompetent in mobile hardware, an area where he lacked knowledge because the software was his strength.

Balasubramanian quickly found a job at a mobile telephony services training institute in the city for a salary of Rs 10,000 and in 2002 started his own training institute - with a sound name, the Madras Institute of Mobile Phone Technologies (MIMT), in Pondy Bazaar Me

He ran the institute with a partner until 2005 when he married Veena Madhuri, a girl he had fallen in love with. In 2006, he joined a mobile phone chain, The Mobile Store, as their technical director for Tamil Nadu for a salary of 25,000 rubles.

"There I learned how a corporate business worked, how they treated a lot of people with technology. It was a valuable experience," said Balasubramanian, who later left the company to set up his own mobile repair center, First Call. in Adyar, 2009

He now has ambitious growth plans and will soon enter the refurbished phone market.

"We are seeking funding to implement our plans," says Balasubramanian, who lives in a 3-bedroom rental villa in the city, drives a Skoda Rapid, and has placed his two children, aged 13 and 4, in Life Hub, cooperative homeschooling, pays a fee of 1 million rubles for each of them.

Father is giving children the life they never knew existed during all the years they spent in the hostel.