Vinayak Steel Co.

Our shop, Vinayak Steel Co., is over at 121 J. N. Mukherjee Road in Ghusuri. It’s a gritty area with a lot of industry and trucks. We’ve been here for a long time, and the building shows its age, but it’s sturdy. We have a lot of steel stock piled up inside and some overflowing into the small yard. It’s mostly just me and two other guys working here every day. We handle everything from unloading the trucks to talking to the customers who drive in. The road outside is always full of potholes and traffic, which makes deliveries a bit slow sometimes. We don't have a computer system for everything; we still use a lot of paper notebooks to keep track of what's going out. It’s just simpler that way for us. We don’t do any advertising. People in Ghusuri just know we are here if they need steel. Sometimes we sit outside on stools during the slow hours and just watch the street. It’s a lot of hard work, especially when it’s humid. We don’t promise anything crazy, we just show people what we have in stock and tell them the price. That’s how we’ve always done it. My family has lived in this area for generations, so we aren't going anywhere else. It’s not much, but it’s our living and we take it one day at a time.