East Bay Marine Exports

If you ever come down to Triplicane, you’ll find East Bay Marine Exports tucked away at No. 9, Ponnapa Lane. It’s one of those narrow streets where you have to be careful how you park your bike. The building is an old one, like many around here, and it gets quite warm during the Chennai summers. We do a lot of export work, which mostly means we are constantly on the phone or checking emails about shipping containers and port schedules. The marine business is all about timing, so we spend a lot of time looking at clocks. We aren't a big operation with hundreds of employees; it’s just a few of us in a small room making sure the paperwork for the fish and shrimp is correct. There’s usually a stack of files on every desk and a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere. We know the port workers and the agents by their first names because we talk to them every single day. It can get stressful when a shipment is delayed, but we just handle it as it comes. Sometimes we have to stay late to match the time zones of the people we are selling to. It’s a lot of repetitive work, checking codes and weights, but it keeps us busy and the business running. We like being in Triplicane because of all the food nearby, even if the lane is too small for big trucks.