Ramalingam was a traditional industrialist involved in
the manufacture of coconut oil. He had a very successful
business practice in the coastal town of Tuticorin in Tamil
Nadu. Tuticorin is a harbor town and has many huge industrial
and other establishments like Tuticorin Thermal Power Station,
Southern Petrochemical Industries Ltd., Tuticorin Alkali
Chemicals and Fertilizers Ltd., Kilbum Chemicals, Madura
Coats, a harbor, a host of leading C&F and logistics
companies and a well-developed Small Industries Promotion
Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) complex. The people of
the town are usually hardworking and traditional. The host
of companies had given rise to a large mobile population
of technocrats. The industry based population was heterogeneous
comprising engineers, top management people, technicians,
workers, etc.
Mr. Ramalingam had only one son, a technocrat who was employed
in Chennai. Though he had a turnover running into crores
of rupees from his oil business, he wanted a profit-making
leisure business. He started an exclusive pet shop which
is a general category shop dealing with pets christened
as "Pet World". After a year, when he found that
the pet shop did not make much of a profit, he decided to
close down or sell off the shop. At that time, his son who
had been on a short outside-work experience, had returned
to take care of the family business. Mr. Ramalingam's daughter-in-law
Vimala was a veterinary doctor who had a natural interest
in pets, especially dogs.
Pets are an evergreen passion for people. However, the
inclination to own a pet is decreasing nowadays among people
because of reduced garden space, increase in nuclear families,
a fast-paced life and reduced availability of domestic help
to do household chores. This evidently resulted in the pet
shop not making profits. The problem was to look at the
ways and means of making the pet shop business viable.
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