THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Taking risks is normal for K.N.G. Kaimal and his wife Girija. When Kaimal decided to resign his job as administrative officer of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre years ago, Girija too threw away her job as librarian with the University of Kerala.
Kaimal dreamt of being creative and productive by starting an engineering unit along with a friend and Girija got busy with the studies of their younger son who was then in the high school.
But now Kaimal is the managing partner of Asian Bakers (the ubiquitous Asian Bread) and managing director of Nilamels and Kaimals Foods Pvt. Ltd. Girija owns two thriving boutiques in the city.
Thiruvalla native Kaimal recalls that he worked in the VSSC when former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was also there. Though he did not have any kind of engineering background, he was keen to make a footprint in the business field and set up a unit in Chennai.
But later, he set up Pyromasters, a heating company with a business partner at Veli Industrial Estate here. He recalled that trade union activism was at its zenith which forced them to close it down. It was then that Asian Breads started by a Kottayam native Ulahannan Thoppil at Pangagppara here too was forced to shut down.
“With just 20 employees in 1986, it has now grown with 60 staff and a turnover of Rs 10 crore. If Asian Bakers comes out with different varieties of bread and bun, Girija’s unit, Asian Food Products, makes a vast range of cakes like plum, sponge, tea cake, ribbon cake and more as well as rusk,” said Kaimal who has the credit of launching the second mechanized bread unit in Kerala after Modern Bread of Modern Food Industries.
Kerala’s delicacies in frozen form like tapioca, kumbil appam, ila ada, kozhukatta, maida and wheat parotta, grated cocounut, cut coconut, aviyal, sambar etc, relished by the NRK and NRIs, also come from Nilamels and Kaimals Foods Pvt. Ltd.
Though this company is just two years into the business from the Kinfra Apparel Park, his business acumen has come to his aide in having a turnover of Rs 6 crore already.
It also has a chips unit at Malayinkeezhu which churns out a wide variety of crisps. Kaimal, who is also the founder of Chalachitra Film Society, says his wife is good in fashion designing and singing.
Though Girija had resigned her job on the pretext of teaching her younger son, Aravind, she was brushing up her music skills from Prof. Omanakutty and also earned a degree in interior designing. Recently she passed her MBA in marketing with flying colours.
“Incidentally, Aravind is now a renowned graphic designer based in San Francisco in the US. My only regret when I resigned was that I could no longer sing at the university employees’ cultural club at Senate Hall. But to get over that, I launched a music club, Ganasmrithi, where there are 40 families as members. We meet there on the last Saturday of every month and sing songs that are two decades old,” said Girija who owns Cleopatra boutique at Edapazhanji and also at Palayam Saphalyam Complex.
The couple who are green card citizens of US have an elder son, Anand, a software engineer based in Chicago.
