Patel Logistics

Patel Logistics is based at 1St Cross, 4Th Street in Jeevan Nagar, which is in the Addambakkam area of Chennai. It’s a residential neighborhood, so it feels a bit different than being in a big industrial park. We have to be careful with the trucks so we don't block our neighbors' driveways or make too much noise early in the morning. The office is basically just a ground-floor room in a house that we converted for business. It gets really hot in Chennai, so we keep the windows shut and the AC running as much as we can afford. We spend our days coordinating schedules and talking to people at the port. It’s a lot of coordination and sometimes things don’t go as planned, but we figure it out. We don’t have any fancy uniforms or a big sign outside. Most people find us because we’ve been in Addambakkam for years. There is a small temple nearby, and we hear the bells every morning when we are starting our work. It’s a quiet street for the most part, until one of our delivery vans pulls in. We aren't a corporate giant with thousands of employees. We are just a local team that knows the city streets and the quickest ways to get around the traffic. We eat a lot of tiffin from the place around the corner and keep working until the job is finished. It’s just how things are done here.