Mittlal Steel Udyog

Our place, Mittlal Steel Udyog, is down at 3311 Netaji Subhas Road. If you’ve ever been down this way in Kolkata, you know how crowded it gets with all the handcarts and people. Our office is in one of those old buildings where the hallways are narrow and the ceilings are high. We deal in steel, so there’s always a lot of paperwork regarding weights and shipping. The desks are piled high with ledgers and receipts because we still like to keep track of things on paper. It’s noisy outside with the traffic, but inside we just focus on the orders. We’ve been here for a long time, and the furniture has been around almost as long as the business. We don't have any fancy air conditioning, just a couple of wall fans that hum all day. Dealing with steel isn't exactly clean work, so there’s usually some grit on the ledgers. We spend a lot of time on the phone talking to suppliers and trying to figure out where the deliveries are stuck. Most of our customers are regulars who have been buying from us for decades. We don’t bother with much branding or anything like that. We just open the doors in the morning, drink our chai, and get to work. It is a busy, cramped, and honest way to spend the day, and we wouldn't know how to do it any other way. It's just business as usual for us.