For the past couple days, Selvan and I have been hunting for a combined apartment / office / warehouse space in Pollachi. We need space for Selvan to live and work, space for Diana to stay in when she spends time in Pollachi, and space to store products until we feel ready to upgrade to a proper warehouse. We looked at several places on the first day, but most were less than ideal. They were either too far from town, or didn’t have enough space.
There was one place that caught our attention. It was centrally located and had huge, open rooms. When renting space here, you have to put down a deposit that you don’t get back until you leave. The deposit for this place was 10 months’ worth of rent. That’s a lot of capital for a start-up to have tied up.
Then yesterday, we looked at a place in a brand new building. The flat had just been finished, and the set up and location were perfect. The deposit was only five months’ worth of rent, which is much better for us. So we spoke to the owner of the building to talk about moving in. We wanted to make sure he was OK with us not being a family (some owners don’t like to rent to bachelors), and he was OK with a bunch of foreigners visiting in a week. All was fine, thankfully. He typically rents to people on two year contracts, which is a bit much for us to commit to as we’re getting started. But when we told him about our social mission, he said he could make an exception for us. Overall, I got a good feeling from the building owner.
Today we move out of a hotel and into our new space! The place is really perfect and is somewhere we can grow into. Selvan and I are excited, and are headed out to furniture shop right now.