To start with I would like to share the history of how the Byas and company came into existence. My grandfather Late Shri Shankarlal ji Vyas who hailed from an agriculturist family in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, came to Hyderabad Deccan, in search of livelihood. He chose the photography business as had little exposure to this line of activity during his brief stint in Nasik. But he thought that Nasik was a small place and there would be better scope in Hyderabad because it was a prosperous state under the Nizams. He started his studio in the Kothi area opp Residency, in the year 1920. During this journey of 102 long years lot of changes, and developments took place, not in the industry but also at a political level in Hyderabad and also in the country. As my father Shri Goverdhan Das ji Vyas recalls his fathers’ memories while he worked with him, I would like to share some of them in brief with you here. Those days, photography was a rare and very secret type of business; very few people were involved in this activity. One of the first ones was Raja Deen Dayal in Secunderabad.
Photographs were exposed on glass plates and prints were taken on black and white paper. The enlargements were done only in England and my grandfather used to send them to England by post. It used to take about 27 days to reach there and then another one month to get them back. The money was sent by money order. To do this he had to walk all the way up to the cantonment areas located beyond Secunderabad. He was very smart enough to get this done and we can now safely say that he was using the concept of “outsourcing” in those days.
Now we all know it is a common business practice all over the world. In those days it was a very big studio at Kothi and he had at one stage 40 employees working for him. Imagine in those days he has provided so much employment and fed forty families. Another turning point in their studio was – one fine morning the HEH the Nizam of Hyderabad with his full convoy of security persons etc and family were passing through the kothi area, saw the impressive display of good portraits and photographs of his family and ancestors particularly, the photos of the parents of Princess Niloufer – and visited the studio. He enquired about the rates of those family photos. To which my grandfather humbly responded – “SARKAR, WOH TOH AMULYA HAI” ie – THEY ARE PRICELESS. The Nizam was very much impressed and after that for all functions and celebrations of the Royal family, my grandfather was called for taking photos. While this continued, he was again very happy with the services and quality of work and conferred the title of SHAHI PHOTOGRAPHER to Byas & Co., on the 29th of Sep, 1929.
During this time the Nizam also suggested opening another studio and sent the officials of the then City Improvement Board and showed three locations to choose from… one was at abids, the place where GPO stand now, the second one was the Lepakshi showroom land at Gunfoundry and the third one was at Bashirbagh. My grandfather chose bashirbagh because it was cheap and big and also he was very practical and futuristic…he thought it was the centre of the twin cities. My grandfather had employed professionals in the studio like Mr Shukla from Bombay and along with him he also learned the professional photography. During this time my father Shri Goverdhan Das ji Vyas also joined the studio. He was just 12 years and used to do his schooling at Vivek Vardhini and after school hours used to help his father in the studio. As my grandfather was not keeping too well, my father had to discontinue studies after class 9 and joined the family business full time and even at the age of 92 he is very active in the day to day activities of our business.
On 29th November, 2018 he expired. During the long years of his experience he has seen the complete changes from – Black and White glass plates to cut films to roll films to color films and now to digital photography….where for flash cotton balls with gun powder were ignited…we had day light studio operating from morning 0800 am to evening 0500 pm…we had ground glass roof and curtains of different colors and shades to give lighting effects. Over the years many people who were working with him – left and started on their own and doing well…my father always encouraged entrepreneurship. Mulki studio, Aryan art studio are some examples. In between the independence movement, razakar daur, liberation of Hyderabad all happened. However, my father moved on with times and kept on focussing on his business. In the year 1965 the studio was shifted to Bashirbagh. At this time he thought to share the knowledge he has gained, and started a training institute called Ganesh Institute of Photography. It was a short course of two months with one hour of class daily with both theory and practical’s ie on the job in our own studio. The fee charged was just Rs 50 for total course including material. At the end of the course exams were conducted and a diploma was awarded to all successful students.
