Coimbatore’s Board Games Hub is a place for fun, frolic, and food

The founder of Board Games Hub in Coimbatore, Prakash Nagalingam, wants to build a community for board games enthusiasts

On a Wednesday afternoon, Board Games Hub at Saibaba Colony, is near-vacant. Its founder, Prakash Nagalingam, and his staff are engrossed in a game as we enter. One of the best things about running a board games cafe is that your work entails playing board games on a midweek day. Going by the empty tables, it is fair to say not many share the same fortune.

Prakash interrupts his game to talk about his six-month-old venture and boyish excitement for board games. We choose a four-seater wooden table that faces a painted wall with board game elements like coins and characters and the words ‘Game On’ in the middle.

Hailing from Tiruppur, it hardly surprises us to know Prakash got into textile export. But how did this textile businessman set up a board games cafe in Coimbatore?

“Board games is more than a business; it is passion,” he says. His mother introduced them to him during his boyhood years — between mid-80s and early 90s. “By seven, I already owned around 15-20 board games. They were my primary source of entertainment as it was still early days of TV and no internet, too,” he says. He recalls summer vacations spent playing games like Business, dhaayam (dice), and Scotland Yard with his cousins, aunts, and mom. “Sometimes we’d be up until 3 am playing them.”

Board games became a tradition during family gatherings. But after school, education took precedence. There was a bit of a hiatus. Then, while working in Chennai, Prakash and his family rediscovered their passion for board games through The Board Room, a board games cafe in Mylapore and Anna Nagar. “We were excited by the diverse collection of games. We’d spend hours there with family, including my five-year-old.”

He wanted to drag his friends into it as well. “They reluctantly agreed to come for half an hour and ended up being there for four hours!” he says, chuckling. That’s when his friends asked him to start his own board games cafe. Prakash’s textile business, at that point, was stagnating. So, he thought he would give it a shot. “The Board Room was an inspiration,” he adds.

He opened Board Games Hub in Coimbatore in May this year. Why Coimbatore and not Chennai or Tiruppur — the places he has lived?