Inside Lamington Road: The beating heart of Mumbai’s PC-building culture

On a humid Saturday morning in South Mumbai, the kind that makes the city shimmer and sweat, Hrishikesh Parkhe walks into Lamington Road with a list in one hand and a backpack slung over his shoulder. He’s been coming here for almost 10 years, ever since he built his first PC as a broke college student who saved every rupee to buy a graphics card.

Back then, the shopkeepers knew him as the kid who asked too many questions. Now, they greet him as “Parkhe bhai,” one of the regulars who still swears by Mumbai’s original tech paradise.

The market doesn’t look like much from the outside, though. Far from a fancy shopping street or mall. It’s a tangle of wires, fans humming, scooters wedged between shops stacked with boxes that read Asus, MSI, Cooler Master, and Corsair

But inside this maze of metal shutters and fluorescent light lies a culture, one that refuses to die in this age of online shopping.

The regulars

For Parkhe, Lamington Road isn’t about bargains anymore; it’s about belonging. He still likes to touch the components, test compatibility, and talk shop with someone who’s been a part of the PC-building culture. “Online, it’s all specs and filters,” he says. “Here, you get advice and chai.”

Over the years, Parkhe learnt the language of PC components and performance tuning. But he’s not alone. Engineering college students, freelance video editors, gamers building their first rigs—they all arrive here with excitement in their eyes and confusion on their faces.

And within minutes, someone from behind the counter takes over, sketching out PC builds on notepads, explaining bottlenecks, and debating the best cooling setup for a mid-range GPU.

It’s the kind of mentorship and sales that only exists here. Parkhe remembers almost falling for a scam years ago, when someone sold him the wrong RTX card. “The place teaches you how to navigate both tech and people.”

“I have surely added some bargaining skills to my resume,” he says.

The shopkeepers' street

If Fashion Street is Mumbai’s bargain wardrobe, then Lamington Road is the city’s PC hub. Walk a few metres down this stretch and you’ll spot familiar names: Prime ABGB, Phoenix Technology NX, Right Solutions, Computer Selection, and more.

Some of these stores have been around for decades, run by the same families who once sold floppy drives and CRT monitors. Their glass counters are now lined with gaming cases, SSDs, and liquid coolers that glow like neon sculptures.

Behind every counter is a small story of survival. Pratik, who runs Pheonix Technology NX, a mid-sized shop tucked between two hardware stores, remembers the pandemic days when footfalls dropped to a minimum. “We thought it was over,” he recollects.

“But then gamers, streamers, everyone needed PCs again. That’s when business came back,” he says pointing to a stack of boxes labelled RTX. Now, many of Pratik’s customers are YouTubers.

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Unlike regular computer shops, which just sell components, most shops here help you assemble the entire machine. Cheery on the top, they also run benchmarks and test it to further gain the customer’s trust.

Customers often hang around to watch, taking photos as if witnessing an art form. You can hear conversations about airflow, frame rates, and future-proofing echoing between lanes.

The builders' culture

Lamington Road isn’t just a market; it’s a community of builders. You’ll find groups of friends pooling money for a shared gaming setup and teenagers comparing benchmarks.

Although most people come from different parts of the city, many also visit from faraway places like Pune and Ahmedabad, just to have their dream PC built ‘the Lamington way’.

Every build is personal. There’s pride in choosing each component, from the motherboard to the power supply. Shop technicians often know customers by their builds—”the guy who did the all-white NZXT setup” or “the one with the water-cooled 4090”. Many of these builds also end up on YouTube or Reddit, tagged with captions like ‘Built on Lamington Road’.

It’s also a place where skill and passion intersect. “Anyone can list out PC parts on YouTube,” says one PC builder, wiping sweat off his hands. “But we actually build and make them run.”

Tradition meets transition 

Even in this age of one-day deliveries, Lamington Road continues to draw crowds. Prices for some components may not always beat online listings, but here you get instant replacement, in-person troubleshooting, and honest opinions that can’t be bought with coupon codes.

What’s great is that the market has adapted. Many stores now run their own websites, some even livestream custom builds. For instance, Phoenix Technology NX and Right Solutions are quite popular online and have their own YouTube pages.

Known names like Prime ABGB also have their own website where people can order and build their own rig. Still, the old-school vibe remains. Handwritten bills, cash discounts, and banter between shop owners.

There’s a rhythm to how deals are made; a quick calculation on a rough pad, a handshake, and sometimes, a cup of chai to seal the deal. It’s business, after all, but it’s also about building a relationship with the customer.

Parkhe recalls when he once blew up his motherboard after a power surge. “I walked back here the next morning,” he laughed. “They replaced it in 10 minutes. Try explaining that to an online return bot.”

A legacy of wires and wisdom

Lamington Road wasn’t always about GPUs and gaming rigs. Long before RGB lights and liquid coolers took over, Lamington Road was Mumbai’s radio street.

Back in the 1970s, the shops here sold radio valves, cassette heads, and spare parts for hobbyists and repairmen. The area’s central location, near Grant Road station, made it easy for technicians, suppliers, and customers from across the city to gather. Gradually, a tight-knit network of traders and repairmen emerged, specialising in electronics. That cluster effect is what gave rise to the Lamington Road. If one shop didn’t have a computer part, the next lane surely would.

By the 1980s, Lamington Road had become Mumbai’s electronics hub—the go-to place for radio parts, transistors, and cassette heads. When the computer boom arrived in 1990s, the same streets adapted seamlessly. The radio shops turned into PC stores, selling motherboards, Pentium processors, and floppy drives.

Mahavir Electronics, which started around that time, still stands as one of the oldest survivors of that shift. As technology evolved, so did Lamington Road. The same families who once sold radio valves now deal in high-end GPUs and custom-built gaming PCs.

Interestingly, the street’s official name today is Dr. Dadasaheb Bhadkamkar Marg, but Mumbaikars still call it Lamington Road, named after Lord Lamington, a former Governor of Bombay. The old name stuck, just like the market’s reputation for reliability and repair.

Shopkeepers from that era still remember when import restrictions made parts hard to find. They sourced components through a complex web of distributors, travellers, and sometimes, sheer luck.

“If you wanted a sound card in the 2000s, this was the only place in Mumbai to get one,” an elderly shop owner recollects, smiling behind a counter of modern-day motherboards. “People used to come with entire office orders.”

Today, Lamington Road mirrors India’s tech evolution—from analogue to digital, from wired to wireless. Its crowd may have evolved, but the essence remains the same: curiosity, craftsmanship, and community.

The beating heart

As evening falls, the shutters start coming down. Parkhe’s rig is finally ready; the RGB fans spin to life, bathing the counter in blue light. He grins like it’s his first build all over again. Around him, the lanes buzz with one last burst of conversation before closing time.

Lamington Road may not be among Mumbai’s flashiest markets anymore, but it is still a place where enthusiasts congregate to build their dream PCs—not just buy.

In a world obsessed with unboxing videos and next-day deliveries, this vintage street continues to celebrate the joy of creation, one cable, one component, and one chai at a time.