In 1990, in a lane in Daryaganj, I started a small battery manufacturing and trading operation. I was in my early twenties. I had no business training. I had already tried wholesale marketing in Sadar Bazar, made a solo trip to Calcutta at 17, worked in Dubai for a year exporting iron and steel scrap. None of it had stuck.

Batteries were never a passion. But they were a livelihood, and I needed one. So I threw myself into it — learning the product, building relationships, doing everything from manufacturing to sales to delivery. For years, Moscow Batteries was the centre of my working life.

And then something strange happened. A computer I bought to run the business broke down. I enrolled in a diploma course to fix it. And fixing that computer opened a door I didn’t know existed — a door into technology, into the internet, into a completely different career.

The irony is not lost on me. The battery business funded the computer that led me away from batteries and into everything I do today — web development, SEO consulting, digital strategy. Moscow Batteries is still running at our original Daryaganj address. It’s the foundation on which everything else was built.

I keep it because it’s honest work. Because not everything needs to scale. Because some businesses exist not to make you rich but to make you real.

Moscow Batteries Daryaganj, Delhi

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