From Egmore Station Platform to a Travel Empire

V. K. T. Balan left school after Class VIII and was drawn to theatre, staging film-based plays in his village of Tiruchendur. His family belonged to a washerman community, and they often ate leftover food from the villagers they worked for. His father died when Balan was 19.

In 1981, at 27, he arrived at Egmore railway station in Chennai. He hoped to become a film star like Kamal Haasan or Rajinikanth. He had left without telling his family, travelled without a ticket, and had only the dhoti and shirt he was wearing.

The station platform became his home, shared with rickshaw-pullers, beggars, pickpockets and other homeless people. He could not find a job because employers would not hire a stranger, and he went without food for several days at a time, becoming thin and frail. One night a policeman struck him with a lathi while he slept, and, fearing a false charge, he ran and slept instead on the pavement outside the American consulate, where people waited overnight in the visa queue. The article does not say how long he was homeless.

The queue gave him an idea. He sold his place in line for two rupees, then began reserving spots for others and reselling them, until he was earning 20 rupees a day. He rented a room in Saidapet for 150 rupees a month, earned commissions selling flight tickets and worked as a visa courier on the Rameswaram–Colombo route in 1982. In 1986 he opened his own agency in Mannady, North Chennai.

In 1993 he turned it into a private limited company, Madura Travel Service, to gain IATA recognition. Its turnover reached 22 crore rupees by 1998 and 100 crore by 2017, and he received the Kalaimamani Award in 1997.