Heeraa Mansion.
The company is named after the building. Not the other way round.
[Photograph of Heeraa Mansion, exterior, morning light on the façade. This image will do more for trust than anything written on this page.]
A building, then a business
Heeraa Mansion stands at 20/18 General Muthiah Mudali Street, in Sowcarpet, the quarter of Chennai where wholesale, jewellery, textiles and credit have operated shoulder to shoulder for well over a century. The family owns it. The company took its name from it.
That order matters. Most lenders rent an office and put a name on the door. Here the name came off the building, and the building has not changed hands.
Before it was a company
The business existed before 1995. Goutam Chand Nahar was lending from this quarter before there was a certificate of incorporation to point at, on the basis that people knew who he was and where to find him, which in Sowcarpet has always been the real security.
[When the family came to this street, and what the trade was before finance, to be supplied from the interview with Praveen Chand Nahar.]
Why it still matters
A lender that owns its own premises, carries almost no debt and has no charge registered against its assets is telling you something specific: the money it lends is money it can afford to have out. Thirty-one years at one address is the same statement made a different way.
It is also simply practical. If something goes wrong with your loan, you know exactly which door to knock on. That is not nothing.
The address
20/18 General Muthiah Mudali Street,
Sowcarpet, Chennai 600 079