Our Story —
From a Single
Hurricane Lantern.

Bhebhra Chowk in Jokihat was a small junction in 1998 — kuchcha roads, a few tea-stalls, and a constant hum of pedal-rickshaws ferrying farmers between Araria town and the surrounding villages. Electricity reached this part of Bihar in fits and starts; the people who depended on it knew it was a fragile thing — a loose wire, a melted joint, a borrowed switch could plunge an entire household into darkness.

It was against this backdrop that Pakiza Electronics opened its first shutter — a single ten-by-twelve-foot shop tucked along the main road near the flyover crossing. There was no signboard back then, only a hand-painted name on the white-washed wall and a wooden counter behind which sat the founder, repairing a tube-choke under the light of a hurricane lantern.

The shop stocked the bare essentials of village wiring: bundles of single-strand copper wire, ceramic fuses, bakelite switches that clicked like a typewriter, a row of 60-watt Philips bulbs and a small collection of repair tools. Customers came from Jokihat, Sikti, Forbesganj — sometimes walking five kilometres because they had heard that the shop near the flyover sold genuine wire by the metre, not by the eye-ball.

By the turn of the century Pakiza Electronics had built a quiet reputation. Electricians who serviced government schools and primary health centres in Araria would stop by on their way home, knowing that the shop did not mix copper wire with cheaper aluminium look-alikes — a common scam in the rural market at the time.

In 2001 the shop received its first full 90-metre coil of FR-grade copper wire. It was an extravagance. Holding the heavy spool in his hands, the founder later recalled thinking that if a single house in Jokihat caught fire because of faulty wiring, the trust earned over three years would burn with it. So began the policy that still holds today: only ISI-marked stock, always.

That year also saw the first hire — a young helper named Imran, who would spend the next two decades growing into the shop's lead store-keeper.

The early 2000s were boom years for Indian electrical brands. Polycab was expanding its rural reach, Havells was rebranding from a switchgear maker into a household name, and KEI was making its first push into the Eastern circle. Pakiza Electronics, by virtue of consistent monthly orders through a Patna distributor, finally received its first authorisation letter in 2005 — a single A4 sheet stamped and signed, naming the shop an Authorised Dealer for house-wiring cables.

The letter was framed and hung above the counter. It still hangs there.

Authorisation changed the economics of the business. Prices became transparent, warranty claims became actionable, and customers stopped asking the question every village shop dreaded: is this real or first-copy?

By 2010 Bhebhra Chowk had become a small commercial hub. The flyover was complete, the main road was tarred, and electricity supply — though still patchy — had stabilised enough that village homes were upgrading from a single tube-light to fully wired four-room concrete houses.

Pakiza Electronics expanded into the adjacent shop, knocked down a partition wall, and reopened as a 600-square-foot showroom. For the first time the customer could walk in, see a Bajaj ceiling fan turning under a sample socket, hold a Goldmedal modular plate in their hand, and compare the weight of a Polycab wire coil against a cheaper unknown brand.

It was around this time that the shop also started taking small contractor orders — wiring an entire two-storey house, supplying meters of cable to a panchayat building, even fitting out a local clinic with switchgear and fans. The notion of a one-stop electrical destination for Araria district was beginning to take shape.

Between 2012 and 2016, authorisations arrived in a steady drumbeat: Bajaj Electricals for fans and appliances, RR Kabel for value-segment wires, Anchor for plates, and a clutch of newer Indian brands like Greatwhite and Pharox that were betting on the second-tier rural market.

The showroom shelving was rebuilt twice in those years to make room. Pakiza Electronics also brought in inverter and battery lines — Microtek for inverters, Livguard and Livfast for batteries — recognising that with longer summers and more appliances, every Araria household would eventually need back-up power.

A modest delivery van, second-hand and white, joined the operation in 2014. The painted side-panel proudly listed every authorised brand. Children at Bhebhra Chowk pointed at the van as it rumbled past, and adults nodded in recognition.

The closing months of 2019 brought a sense of quiet expansion. The showroom now stocked LG and Samsung televisions for the festival season, and Microtek inverters were flying off the shelves before every Chhath. Plans were drawn for a second branch in Forbesganj.

Then March 2020 happened. Within weeks the shutter was down, the highway empty, and migrant workers walking past the flyover in long, silent lines were the only customers in sight. The founder kept the shop closed but did not lay off anyone. Salaries were paid out of personal savings for three months. When the shop reopened in mid-2020 under strict masking norms, the first customer was an electrician from Sikti who had walked twelve kilometres to buy a single switchboard for a home with a newborn.

It was a year of losses on the balance sheet but no loss of staff, no loss of stock authenticity, and no compromise on the trust the brand had built over twenty-two years.

Post-pandemic, the shop's first WhatsApp catalogue went out in early 2022. A phone number — the same +91 82522 09843 that customers can message today — was added to the painted board outside the showroom. Within months, fifty per cent of contractor orders were coming through WhatsApp: a photo of a damaged MCB, a list of cable sizes, a delivery address.

GST invoicing, online payments, doorstep delivery within a 40-kilometre radius — all rolled out, one quiet step at a time. The book of authorised brands kept growing: Pressfit conduits, SJ Plus, Fortuner, Rio Flex, RK Gold, Benlo, and the local heroes Sawaan, Rana, Long Line, Dum, Fast Go and others who specifically serve the Seemanchal market.

Today Pakiza Electronics stocks more than five hundred SKUs across thirty-plus authorised brands. The same shop near the flyover at Bhebhra Chowk is now three units wide. The original wooden counter from 1998 still sits at the back of the shop — kept not for nostalgia but because the founder still uses it on Saturday mornings to settle accounts with old customers who prefer cash and conversation over a swipe machine.

The mission has never changed: keep electricity safe for every household in Jokihat, Araria, and beyond. The methods have. The customer who once walked five kilometres for a coil of copper wire can now message the shop on WhatsApp, view the website at pakizaelectronics.com, and have the same authorised stock delivered the next morning.

From one bulb to three lakh fittings sold every year — the journey is still being written, one trusted wire at a time.