If you've hit a paywall, you should subscribe to @businessline. Its a good paper! A small thread from the TVS business history piece...
https://twitter.com/trvivek/status/1337593378989461504
As a young timber merchant in Madurai, TV Sundaram Iyengar (TVS) was fascinated by the gleaming new automobiles that used to whiz past his depot at what seemed a magical speed of 12 miles an hour.
So he decided to import a couple of Dennis&Commer buses that could offer a larger number of people the experience of lightning-quick road travel. The buses were fitted with a chain-drive that needed frequent refitting and had a top speed of 15 miles an hour.
In 1912, TVS started what was perhaps the first passenger bus service in the country, between Madurai and Devakottai. The 64-mile ride cost a princely ₹4 but came with a free meal. TVS buses carried everything in spare other than the engine and chassis!
Within a year, passenger bus rides had become so popular that several new operators rushed in and undercut fares to such an extent that TVS had to stop its operations and shift to a new route, between Pudukottai and Thanjavur.
This necessitated TVS’ first business diversification. Since roads were not built for vehicular traffic, buses would wear out fast. To reduce maintenance cost, the only option was for the bus operator to double up as a road contractor.
By 1916, TVS had started the import and distribution of Firestone tyres and Ford and Graford truck components. In 1923, he became a sub dealer for Chevrolet and that was when TV Sundaram Iyengar and Sons was established.
Because TVS was both a consumer and dealer of precious spare parts, it realised the need for keeping prices low. It could have sold spares for huge margins but chose to keep them reasonably low.
In 1929, TVS secured a direct General Motors dealership for Madurai, Tirunelveli, Ramnad and Pudukottai regions. Despite the economic depression, sales exceeded expectations.
Sundaram Iyengar’s four sons joined the family business even before they had finished school. Of his three daughters, TS Soundram, a gynaecologist, was a renowned Gandhian activist whose legacy lives on in southern Tamil Nadu.
In 1947, Soundram and her Dalit Gandhian husband G Ramachandran started the model rural settlement, Gandhigram, based on the Mahatma's social and economic vision, near Dindugul.
World War II necessitated industrial innovations at TVS and it triggered an engineering culture that would help the group win accolades such as the Deming Prize more than half a century later.
As petrol became scarce during the war years, Sundaram Iyengar’s son TS Krishna designed and developed a gas plant to help power vehicles with charcoal gas instead of precious petrol. At the time, TVS sold a whopping 12,000 units of the gas plant!
In the early 1950s, TVS donated Rs 50,000 to the Gandhi memorial and Rs 1 lakh to Madurai College. A pretty bug deal back then!
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