Thirty-one years,
told properly.
Six chapters. Four carry a date because the date is on record. Two do not, because we would rather leave a year blank than invent one.
The handshake years
Goutam Chand Nahar lends from Sowcarpet with no company behind him. The security is that people know who he is and where to find him. In this quarter that has always been the real collateral. The trade is conducted from Heeraa Mansion, the building the family owns.
Incorporation
The business is formalised as a public limited company at the Registrar of Companies, Chennai, under CIN U71309TN1995PLC031035. It is named after the building, not the other way round. The registered office is the address it has never left.
Vehicles first
Automobile finance is the opening line of business, chosen because it reached the most people. New and pre-owned, private and commercial, including a great many vehicles a bank would decline on year of manufacture alone.
The widening
The book widens deliberately, one line at a time, into property, corporate lending, gold and silver, film, micro-finance and the rest. Each line is added because a borrower already known to the house asked for it, not because a market looked attractive.
A succession
Goutam Chand Nahar dies, having been Chairman throughout. His son Praveen Chand Nahar takes the company forward from the same building, on the same principle: the person deciding is the person carrying the risk.
Where it stands
Ten lines of lending. ₹5 crore of paid-up capital. No charge registered against the company’s assets. Registered with the Reserve Bank of India as a Base Layer non-banking financial company of the Investment and Credit Company type, and not authorised to accept public deposits.
The next chapter is a fact we do not have yet.
This page will grow as the record does. Where a year is missing above, it is missing because nobody has written it down yet, and it will go in the moment somebody does.