Simpson & Co is one of the oldest business houses in the city.
| Photo Credit: RAGHUNATHAN SR
TVS Sundaram Motors office on Anna Salai. The TVS group were late entrants but when they came, they took component manufacture to new heights.
| Photo Credit:
BIJOY GHOSH
We may talk airily about the necessity to reduce private automobiles and two-wheelers on the roads and make people move to public transport, but let us face it, historically ours is a city that has prospered on the automotive trade. A few years ago we even breached the Detroit numbers in terms of the vehicles produced in and around the city. I am not sure if that statistic still holds good, but Chennai is one of the three automotive clusters of India, the other two being Pune and the National Capital Region. We are still the largest.
Who would have thought when it came that the automobile was going to be such a major player? It arrived innocuously enough, early in the 1900s, when AJ Yorke of Parry & Co drove his car around the city. But by 1916, when The Hindu published statistics, India was importing around 250 vehicles a month, primarily from the U.K. and the U.S. Most were brought as complete cars while some were chassis, on which local companies – in Chennai this was Simpsons, Addisons and a few others – were assembling custom-built bodies. Buses and trucks soon followed suit.
As early as in 1916, The Hindu was looking far ahead. The maximum speed for a motor car in the city it said should be 12 miles per hour! And black leather for upholstery it said was the worst possible choice given the heat and the possibility of vermin infestation. It recommended white canvas. And it championed the use of alcohol instead of petrol! All of which must have fallen on deaf ears.
Madras or Chennai would have remained an automobile trading hub and nothing beyond. But it was meant for bigger things. Early in the 1940s, S. Anantharamakrishnan and his Amalgamations Limited were dreaming big, setting up India’s first automotive component company, India Pistons in 1949. It is to be noted that there was no car being manufactured in India then. Amalgamations would go on to transform the age-old companies in its fold into manufacturing entities and later usher in the tractor revolution with TAFE. Tube Investments of India (now Murugappa) would bring in the bicycle and later several components, all of which would make the Ambattur area an industrial hub. In the meanwhile, Ashok Motors, meant to assemble Austin cars would transform into heavy vehicle manufacture, becoming Ashok Leyland in the process. That by itself would ensure several automotive component manufacturer set up base in the city. Over time, many of the erstwhile traders in automobiles would jump into manufacturing UCAL and later Rane being two. And tyres came with MRF for on the road and Dunlop for off the road vehicles. The TVS group were late entrants but when they came, they took component manufacture to new heights. Padi was their hub, the complex of plants being the brainchild of T.S. Srinivasan. Add vehicle financing by Sundaram Finance of T.S. Santhanam and later others such as the Shriram Group and Chennai did not look back.
It could have all collapsed in the 1990s when liberalisation brought in a whole crop of overseas manufacturers came in. Car companies set up base in Chennai because it was an automotive eco system but would the indigenous companies survive the onslaught of competition after years of protection. They did. And that by itself is an inspiring story. Step by step they upgraded, in terms of facilities, quality, certification, and procedures. Some of Chennai’s automotive companies were the first to qualify for ISO, QS, TS and Deming Prizes. And Chennai is now one of the world’s automotive centres. In many ways it is one of the crowning achievements of the city.
The next decade will once again be a defining time as the very nature of automobiles is transforming. Chennai should make the cut – it has everything going for it.