Shakti Steel Industries

IB Patel Road is always busy, so getting to the Nirmal Rubber Compound in the morning can take some time. We are tucked away in A/10. It’s a steel business, so things are heavy and usually quite greasy. We spend most of our time moving pipes and sheets from one side of the room to the other. There is a specific smell of raw metal and machine oil that never really leaves the place. It even gets into your clothes after a while. Most of the staff has been here for years, so we all know how the old machines behave. They have their little quirks and sometimes need a bit of a kick to start. The neighborhood in Goregaon East has changed a lot since we first arrived, but this compound stays mostly the same. It is a bit worn down but it works for what we do. We don’t spend much on decorating or making the front look nice. The focus is always on the steel. Sometimes we have lunch together in the small corner that stays relatively clean. It is quiet for about thirty minutes before the grinders start up again. We don't use any high-tech systems to track things, mostly just notebooks and a lot of memory. If a customer walks in, they usually find us covered in some kind of soot. It’s just honest work and we keep at it day after day.