Main gate

It is not really the main gate, but for most of the workers of Simpson & Co Ltd, these are the gates through which they would enter their workplace. The firm is over 150 years old, having been established sometime in the 1840s. Arnold Wright, writing in 1914 about businesses in Madras, claims the year to be 1840 itself. After 170 years, that is a minor quibble, but more interesting is what Wright says about the range of its products. The firm was set up by A.F. Simpson, a Scotsman who came to Madras to ply his trade as a wheelwright. He expanded into harnesses, saddles, boots - all those things that riders may need - and then into coaches also. In a short span of 5 years, Simpson was able to make a name for his products in Madras city and moved from his initial premises on Poonamallee High Road to Mount Road. 

The products were of quite high quality and Simpson reached out to a clientele beyond Madras. The way he chose to get there was through London; it was, even in the 19th century, a preferred vacation spot for rich and famous Indians. Displaying (and advertising) his coaches at industrial exhibitions in London, he canvassed orders from his target demographic right there and supplied them from his works on Mount Road.

By the early 20th century, Simpson had passed on and the firm was being run by George Underhill Cuddon, who had joined the firm as a clerk in 1891. In 1914, the products, as described by Wright, included "carriages, motor-cars, or billiard-tables". However, sometime in the middle of the 20th century, Simpson & Co Ltd had become more specialized, as a manufacturer of diesel engines for various applications. In the 1980s, they attempted a joint venture with Ford to assemble trucks (or LCVs) but that was not successful. They continue to stick with the engines - and they look set to be doing it for another 170 years and more!

From bars to bazaars

Sometime since December last year, the gates at Puzhal Central Prison have seen a spike in the number of people milling around there. No, there was no rise in crime (or conviction) rates; it was just that a new store had opened inside the prison, with a counter to the outside world as well. That was the first outlet of the "Freedom Prison Bazaar". In the past six months, two other outlets have opened up, one at the CMDA Office in Egmore and this one, the newest, just ahead of the Saidapet Metropolitan Magistrates' Courts. 

This one came up three months ago and it stocks the entire range of 'Prison Products'. Tamil Nadu has 9 central prisons, three of which are in Chennai - Puzhal 1 and 2  and the Women's Prison, all in the Puzhal Campus. From soap making to music, there is a lot on offer for them to study. And recently, investments have been made in setting up a bakery (Puzhal), power looms (Coimbatore) and handmade paper units (all prisons). These are in addition to the facilities already available for shoemaking (Vellore), garments (Coimbatore) and soaps and detergents (Trichy) 

Traditionally, these products were used inside the prisons and probably within the Prison Department itself. Since last year, they have been made available to the public and the response seems to have been good enough for the department to consider expansion into the High Court and DMS complexes in the next few months. The profits from these stores would be distributed as a fifth each to the prisoners who worked to produce these, to the Prison Staff Welfare Fund and to the Government Account. The remaining 40% would be ploughed back to the 'business' through the Tamil Nadu Prison Department Manufacture of Goods Fund. So go ahead, give a helping hand to rehabilitate the prisoners!

Headache relief

Desodharaka Kasinadhuni Nageswara Rao Pantulu has made an appearance in this blog earlier, via the park bearing his name. His appearance on earth was a long time ago; he was born in 1867 and after his schooling in Machilipatnam, he moved to Madras for his higher studies. After completing his degree from the Madras Christian College, Nageswara Rao ventured into some kind of business. That was not very successful, because the next few years saw him in Calcutta and then in Bombay, where he was working in some office.

It was in Bombay that Nageswara Rao formulated a balm to relieve headaches. It is said that he worked as an apothecary while in Calcutta; maybe he did and the skill he acquired there helped him to both concoct the balm and to sell it to headache stricken sufferers. He named it after Amrit, the legendary nectar of immortality. Amrutanjan soon became the balm of choice in Bombay, but for some reason that I have not been able to figure out, Nageswara Rao brought the business to Madras. It may have been because of his growing association with the movement to create an Andhra state distinct from the Madras Presidency. Whatever the reason was, the production base of Amrutanjan moved near his home in Mylapore, on Luz Church Road.

The factory has remained there since; one can imagine the whiff of the balm being prepared wafting on the sea breeze down Luz Church Road. That pain balm continues to be the mainstay of Amrutanjan Healthcare Ltd, even though the company has branched off into other products. The gate in the picture leads to the head office of the firm; though the factory is also listed as being at this location, most of the production has moved to a new location outside the city. 

The Wikipedia page has it that Nageswara Rao started off distributing Amrutanjan free at music concerts. If that is true, it doesn't speak well of Bombay's concerts in the late 19th century, does it!

Watching factories

There was a time when one was expected to know how many Inspectors of Factories there were in the state, apart from their bosses, the Deputy Chiefs, on to Joint Chiefs, and thence to the Chief himself.  Considering that the Chief wielded the power to dictate how a factory should be run, he (it has always been he, I don't think Tamil Nadu ever had a woman chief so far) was a shoo-in to have his office in what was once a palace.

The Khalsa Mahal is the southern block of the Chepauk Palace, which was the residence of the Nawabs of Arcot. It was built in 1768 and was acquired by the government in 1850. It is likely that the initial designs were drawn up by Paul Benfield, but in the 1870s, they were expanded by Robert Chisholm. Khalsa Mahal survived quite intact through those efforts, but in recent years, the building has been sorely threatened by fires, and parts have actually been consumed by flames, as well.

The Chief Inspector of Factories may have shifted out of here by now. In fact, there is no more a position called Chief Inspector of Factories. The nomenclature has changed and it is now called Director of Industrial Health and Safety - and the (currently) 48 Inspectors have had their titles changed as Deputy Directors. Wonder if the factories are running ship-shape now!

Well named

From here, if you want to get to the soda factory, you don't have to ask anyone, really. All you have to do is to just follow the sign. Because I did not, there is no photograph of the factory itself - yet. Maybe it will still be in operation when I do get there!

Union office

Once upon a time, WIMCO was an iconic brand, at the very least in the Tiruvottiyur area. It was one of the earliest factories there. The company itself was incorporated in 1923; the factory at Madras used to make matches, which was what the company was known for, so it is likely that its presence at Tiruvottiyur goes back to the first half of the 20th century.

I don't remember much about the factory, even though I had visited it a couple of times. But I remember this building on Tiruvottiyur High Road very well, since I passed it every day for a couple of years or so. WIMCO itself went through a very tough time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with industrial unrest being almost a standard feature of its operations. Almost all the workers at Tiruvottiyur left. Wimco Workers Union was without a raison d'être. The building came to be used for other businesses. 

Once this building goes - as it is bound to, soon, - there will be little left of WIMCO in this place. The last survivors will be the residential area, still called Wimco Nagar, and the suburban railway station of the same name. Wimco will pass into history!

Watch the type

They don't make these anymore.

Chennai had at least two factories making big typewriter brands. Both were from the same group, but Halda was the more prominent of the two, with its factory right on Mount Road. I can't remember ever having seen the factory - in fact I am sure that by the 1990s, the factory had ceased production - but even as recently as 2007, news reports referred to that site as the "Halda Junction". That factory was started in 1956 with a capacity of about 3,500 typewriters annually - with keyboards in 3 languages. By 1960, they had expanded the plant, with capacity going up to 15,000 units and by one report, 83% of the parts being indigenously manufactured.

Halda AB, the Swedish parent had another brand, Facit, which turned out typewriters from its factory in Perungudi. I haven't been able to get much information on when this was started, or when it stopped, but by the 1980s, the typewriter's days were numbered. Halda AB had put their typewriter business on the block; passing through a few hands, they were finally laid to rest sometime in the 1990s. Without any competition, Godrej & Boyce continued making their machines into the 21st century. That sole manufacturer of manual typewriters in the world finally shut production down in April 2011. 

Halda continues to be around today, though in a different avatar. Check out this site!

Buzzin' around

The Beehive Foundry was named very appropriately, by all accounts. It supposedly employed between 500 and 600 workmen even during the lean season and the "activity which prevails in a hive of bees is not excelled by the industry which is manifested by the large staff of employees of this company". Contractors to shipping companies, the railways and large builders among others, the Beehive Foundry was set up in this building, which housed Oakes & Co., arguably Madras' first department store. The Beehive Foundry was Oakes' foray into engineering and it grew to be quite successful, with the works going completely electric (from the original steam power) in 1914, subsequent upon their being awarded the contract to outfit the hospital ship Madras that year. 

Suryanarayana Rao, the scion of a Vijayawada-based business family set up business for himself in 1907. His friend C.A.Chettiar joined him a few years later, and the two of them ventured into the steel foundry and fabrication business. It is quite likely that they took over the Beehive Foundry soon after and the group came to be known as the Beehive Kowtha Group.

The foundry has moved to Vijayawada. But the Group continues to have fabrication shops in Chennai, as well as Hyderabad and Vijayawada; and its corporate office stays on at this address: Beehive Buildings, 57, Broadway, Chennai 600108!

Connecting hide and search

Many a Madrasi would have wondered about why Google's new browser was named so, when Chrome was unveiled. But she would have also taken it in her stride, for she has for a while been puzzled by why a company making leather products should be called 'Durable Chrome Factory', making it sound more like a manufacturer of kitchen utensils rather than footwear and luggage.

In the middle of the 19th century, it was discovered that treating animal skins with chromium sulfate makes for leather that is not only softer and stretchier than vegetable tanned leather but is also much more durable. By 1884, this process had been refined enough for it to be the method of choice for tanning leather. As a lad of 16, G.A.Chambers cut his teeth on the chrome tanning process in London; coming to Madras ten years later, in 1894, he spent the better part of the next decade of his life in the leather export trade, first as assistant and then as manager. During this time, he tried to get the local industry to adopt the chromium tanning process, but neither business nor government was interested in that approach. So, in 1903, he rented a small factory just south of Pallavaram and adopted the process he had tried to popularize. By a combination of circumstances, he became involved at both ends - production and export - of the leather trade, the latter in partnership with others, under the name of Chambers & Co., while the former was solely his; and the name he chose for that business was The Chrome Leather Company.

That Chambers was successful enough for the area around his factory to become known as Chromepet is easily guessable. But not so easy to figure out is what happened to The Chrome Leather Company, which was run by his daughter, Ida, well into the 1960s. My guess is that, after Ida, the company was taken over by someone who has been keen on the business, but not so savvy about the heritage of the organization that was taken over - surely it is reasonable to assume that Durable Chrome Factory, has its origins in G.A.Chamber's company, even if Google's latest product does not give us much to work with?

Getting to work

Until about 5 years ago, Sriperumbudur was a sleepy little town on the way to Bangalore, just outside Chennai. Since then, it has been transformed into a major electronics / telecom manufacturing hub, thanks to Nokia, probably the world's largest phone manufacturer. The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) anchored by Nokia and housing its component suppliers also, provides employment for over 12,000 people. Many of them come from villages over 50 km away from Sriperumbudur, but the buses run by the companies in the SEZ make sure that they arrive on time.

Shift-change time is therefore high traffic time, naturally; here are the early arrivals, coming in for the afternoon shift - they are only the vanguard, maybe just about a tenth of the total workforce that would come in for this shift!

Gates re-opened

Chennai is home to several automobile companies; firms like those of the Amalgamations Group, the TVS Group, the Hinduja Group and the CK Birla Group had created a rich and diversified eco-system of automobile and auto component manufacturers in and around Chennai. Many of those firms were established long ago and have been part of the Chennai's industrial map for a long while now. A fresh impetus to Chennai's automobile manufacturing prowess came about in the mid 1990s, with the setting up of passenger vehicle units by Ford and Hyundai.

Though Ford was the earlier of the two (I believe so - there is not much separating the two, in any case), it was Hyundai that caught the imagination. The first model that rolled out of the plant at Irungattukottai was a huge success and Hyundai was off, blazing the tracks - they currently have the capacity to roll out about 400,000 vehicles a year, while Ford tops out at about half that.

Over the past few months, workers at the Hyundai plant had been agitating, demanding some concessions from the management; things came to a head towards the end of April, when a strike was called. Thankfully, it has not been allowed to prolong and the factory is back in action today, after an agreeement to this effect was reached on Friday. The picture shows a car, probably with some of the managers, entering the factory on Saturday afternoon - maybe they were getting ready to crank up the lines on Monday morning!

First factory

Though the sign says '861', it would be more appropriate to call it '1'. On the western bank as Mount Road (I know I should say Anna Salai, but change comes slowly - sometimes, not at all) meets Arunachala Street, stands this building, with no signage to indicate what it is all about. A newcomer to Chennai can be excused for assuming it is some government office, seeing the art-deco style building and the quiet, unhurried ambience all around it.

But '861, Anna Salai', is special, for various reasons. In the second half of the 19th century, when the owner of this property fell on hard times, it was bought by A.M.Simpson, a Scot who had come to Madras in 1840. By the 1870s, which was when he bought this site, Simpson had become a very well established coach builder, whose products rivalled those made in London. With his business growing, he needed more space for making coaches than was available in his location further south on Mount Road. As horse-drawn coaches gave way to other modes of transport, Simpson's moved into manufacturing rail coaches; the company is also credited with building the first steam-powered motor car in India, in 1903. Circa 1915, the buildings seen beyond the wall were built, as a frontage to the body building workshops and to house the motorcar showrooms. In 1933, Simpson's became the trading agency for the 4 cylinder 'Vixen' engines built by Perkins & Company, a firm set up in Peterborough, England, the previous year. Over the course of subsequent years, the engines proved to be best-sellers. In 1952/3, Simpson & Co. became the first licenced manufacturer of Perkins engines outside England, upon which the jumble of workshops at this site was converted to a modern-day factory.

Today, Simpson & Co. is the flagship of the Amalgamations Group, making the Perkins engines that go into tractors manufactured by TAFE, another company of the Group. Very low profile and unassuming, this first factory on Mount Road does not have any visible external sign of its history, heritage or stature. If one does not notice the stylized 'Simpson & Co.' written on the building, the assumption of it being a government office will take a lot of changing!

PS: In an earlier post about Simpson's sesquicentennial celebrations, I had linked to the Amalagamations Group website. That website (http://www.amalgamationsgroup.com/) has not been renewed and is now with a squatter: another testimony - sadly - to the low profile, even reclusive, nature of one of India's oldest business houses!