Pyare Khan, Transport King of Nagpur, turns a Covid warrior

Story by  ATV | Posted by  Aasha Khosa • 2 Years ago
Pyare Khan
Pyare Khan

 

Malick Asgar Hashmi / New Delhi

Pyare Khan had received a call from Dr Anwar of the makeshift Covid hospital established by the Jamat-e-islami in Nagpur, Maharashtra state of Western India. It was soon after Dr Anwar knew that Khan had delivered 16 tons of medical liquid oxygen  (MLO) to the Government Medical College Hospital for COVID-19 patients.

At the time of writing this, Pyare Khan was making arrangements for delivering one tanker of oxygen to the J-e-Islami hospital in Panchpoli, Nagpur.

The good Samaritan that Khan is he has already donated Rs 50 lakh for a fund created by the Union transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari for the help of corona patients. Gadkari hails from Nagpur.

Maharashtra is one of the worst affected states in the Covid pandemic in India.

Covid-19 pandemic in its second stage has brought focus on Pyare Khan who once sold oranges in a basket and is today the undisputed Transport King of Nagpur through his sheer hard work and honesty. His story of a boy born in a shanty who sold oranges at the local railway station to the owner of a multi-crore business company is inspirational.

 As a young boy, Pyare saw his mother run a tiny grocery shop in the slum the family lived; his father sold clothes in villages. To supplement the family’s income, Pyare Khan started selling oranges at the railway station. He also continued his studies till he failed in the tenth standard and decided to leave the school.

At this stage, he raised some money by selling his mother's jewellery and bought an auto-rickshaw. He scaled up his business of selling oranges by hawking the fruit in his three-wheeler. This continued till the year 2001.

According to media reports, after 2001, Pyare Khan wanted to get into a bigger business. He asked a relative to finance his project; the banks too were reluctant to give a loan in lieu of mortgaging a house in the slum area. Finally one nationalized bank offered him a loan of Rs 11 lakh.

With this money, Khan brought his first truck and started ferrying goods on Nagpur-Ahmadabad highway.  As luck would have it, within six months his truck met with a road accident. Everyone around him told him to shut the business of transportation.

 Pyare Khan got his truck repaired and even managed to get a relaxation in repayment of his loan from the bank. His perseverance and self-confidence paid off  Within three years, he had set up his company - Ashmi Road Transport.

His moment of glory came when several truck companies were offered the job of transporting goods to a particular location in Bhutan. The assignment has a peculiar challenge; there entrance gate on the road was  13 and a half feet high while the height of the truck is 17 and a half feet.

Most of the transporters of India backed out.

Pyare Khan took this as a challenge, he visited Bhutan to study the bottleneck. He quickly found a solution that is not taught in engineering colleges and announced he would pick this assignment.  

Pyare Khan ordered the road to be dug three feet so that truck can easily pass through the gate!.

Pyare Khan's company rose in stature after the Bhutan assignment. Today Ashmi Transport runs 1000 trucks and employs more than 700 persons and has an annual turnover of Rs 600 crores. It has its presence in Nepal and Dubai.