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If your mobile phone is giving you trouble, the options are limited. Either you can head to the authorised service centre, where you will be charged half the price of your phone or more, or to the local mobile shop, where you may run the risk of having some original parts being replaced with dubious ones. For those of you who think that there is no other option, R Gajendran, S Siva Kumar and R Gopalakrishanan are here to help. Give them a call and they will be at your doorstep to repair the handset right in front of you. But that’s not the catch. What makes this concept unique is that they are physically challenged. Friends from childhood, Gajendran, Siva Kumar and Gopalakrishanan are willing to travel across the city if their customers want them to, despite their disability. Although they all stay in Vyasarpadi, they are ready to hit the road on their specially designed bikes. The idea is to travel to any place where their service is required.“We try to understand the problem by talking to the customer over the phone first, and then take the necessary tools with us,” says Gajendran, explaining the trio’s business model. Both of Gajendran’s legs were affected by polio when he was just two years old. “If it’s a hardware problem like display, keypad, panel, charger etc, we fix it right there. If the problem is related to software, we have to take it to the service centre,” he informs.While Gajendran is pursuing this as a full-time job, the other men are working in service centres and only go to customers’ homes on holidays. However, they still work to ensure quality and service. “We buy quality hardware at Ritchie Street and give our customers a three-month service warranty too,” says Siva Kumar, whose legs are also ravaged by polio. While Gajendran, father of two, is a BBM graduate from the University of Madras, Siva Kumar and Gopalakrishanan have studied at Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), after Class 10. They also did the three-month mobile servicing course conducted by Small Industries Service Institute. “NS Venkataraman, founder of the NGO Nandini Voice for the Deprived, financially helped us to pursue the course,” says Gopalakrishnan. To optimise their customer base, they have also become agents of LIC of India. “A friend of us suggested this idea, and it turned out to be a useful one. We are now able to explain the various policy schemes available to our customers,” says Siva Kumar. NS Venkataraman of Nandini Voice for the Deprived, says that all the three men are very enterprising. “We paid them the course fee and they were regular to classes. They learnt with interest and are doing well in life now,” he says. Other friends have also joined them now, and together, they repair electronic appliances. While they’re also planning to start a laptop service centre soon, they are hoping for some financial support. For details, call 7299031355, 7299487676.
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