Tiruchi : In this leafy compound on Williams Road in Tiruchi’s Cantonment area, sits a bungalow with the legend ‘VS’ stamped on the decorative plaster features. All around it are the buildings that form part of the present-day Income Tax office complex.
V. Seshasayee, the former owner of this bungalow (called Seetha Sadan), is perhaps the most famous man we never knew.
“He would always say that as a businessman, you should do your work. He never sought publicity,” says his son Mr. Venkatakrishnan Seshasayee, chairman, governing council, Seshasayee Institute of Technology (S.I.T) in Ariyamangalam.
“All his concern was for his employees. About his children, he may have known where we were studying, but which class, I do not know,” he laughs.
So who was V.S.?
Early years
Born on August 14, 1890 in Valadi village, Lalgudi Taluk, V. Seshasayee had an early introduction to hardship in life. His father Vadamalai Aiyar died in 1902, making the 12-year-old the de-facto householder who had to take care of his mother and three elder sisters.
The family shifted to Tiruchi circa 1900, where V.S. joined the St. Joseph’s High School. “His family responsibilities were the main reason he couldn’t study beyond school,” says Mr. Venkatakrishnan. “But throughout his life, he respected education.”
In Tiruchi, he was to meet his cherished companion and then business associate, R. Seshasayee, who was a few years elder to him. R.S. was to later marry V.Seshasayee’s sister Ranganayaki.
So close were the two friends, that they were often mistaken for brothers. The name of their collaborative venture – The Seshasayee Brothers Engineering Works – did little to dispel this notion.
After graduating from school, R. Seshasayee studied electrical wiring and automobile engineering.
V. Seshasayee’s aptitude in wiring was noticed by Mr. Winter, a senior engineer of South Indian Railways, who took him on as an apprentice. In due course, V. Seshasayee helped his mentor to devise the ‘block system’ of signals that is still used by the Railways.
In 1919, the Seshasayees started a silent movie theatre called Empire Cinema (later known as Gaiety Theatre) in Tiruchi. The innovative proprietors used the same diesel engine set that ran the cinema projector in the evening, to operate a rice mill in the morning.
V.Seshasayee married K. Meenakshi, daughter of a private tutor to the Nizam of Hyderabad in the 1920s. The couple had four children, Sitamani, Venkatakrishnan, Gopalakrishnan, and Balasubramanian. “My mother was a perfect complement to Father,” says Mr. Venkatakrishnan. “Since he was always away on business, it was my mother who managed the household and the children.”
The family residence had hosted many distinguished guests in its heyday. But it was the simpler side of life that V.S. seemed to savour. “Father was very particular in inviting all his staff, irrespective of creed or social standing, to a meal twice a year in our house,” says Mr. Venkatakrishnan. “The people who worked in the house – everyone from the secretaries to the cleaners and gardeners – would be made to sit in rows on the floor. My mother and sister would serve them food, on plantain leaves. Father would be sitting on his easy chair in the middle, watching to see if all were in attendance,” he adds.
Two’s company
The Seshasayees ventured into bus transport from Tiruchi to Devakottai and Perambalur via Thuraiyur.
In 1925, R.Seshasayee (who was then known more popularly as ‘Periyavar’ or Senior), and V. Seshasayee (inevitably known as ‘Chinnavar’ or Junior), started Seshasayee Brothers Engineering Works to sell and service Dodge cars and trucks in Tiruchi district.R.S. had become a mechanical engineer and learned how to operate electrical generators in the United States. His technical expertise, honed in Singapore, remained the backbone of their enterprise, while V.S. took care of the administration.
They got their big break when they installed a generator set to light up the palace of the Raja of Ramnad and run an ice-making plant there.
They then began providing electricity to affluent homes in Devakottai, Karaikudi and Kanadukathan. Lighting up the famous shrines – the Meenakshi temple in Madurai and Ramanathaswamy temple in Rameswaram, followed.
The Seshasayees became the first in Madras Presidency to introduce alternating current (AC) in 1931 by obtaining licences to electrify residential areas of Tiruchi and Srirangam. R.S., the technical brains behind the enterprise, installed a 350 KVA alternator in Tennur (currently the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board office) and started supplying electricity to Tiruchi and later, to Srirangam.
It took the Seshasayees nearly seven years to stabilise the business.
R. Seshasayee, an aviation enthusiast, used to fly his two Tiger-Moth aeroplanes from an improvised landing strip in Sembattu suburb.
Sadly, it was his hobby that was to cause his death. In 1934, the plane that he flew (for the second time that day) to shower flowers over Mahatma Gandhi, who was visiting the city, crash landed at Sembattu, killing him and his co-passenger, a friend.
This and more in-depth information has been recorded in Those Were The Days , the autobiography of noted entrepreneur R. V. Ramani, who had worked under V. Seshasayee for 13 years.
As he notes in his book, “In all the companies that he [V. Seshasayee] established, in not one did the Seshasayee Brothers hold more than 2 per cent of the share capital at any time. This is totally different from the present day position where the term ‘promoter’ indicates an investor who has already subscribed more than 51 per cent of the share capital …”
The highest salary that V.S had drawn in his career was Rs. 3000.
Life after R.S.
V. Seshasayee now had to start charting his career without his soulmate R.S. by his side.
He was an early supporter of the hydro-electric grid supply from the Pykara Lake in the Nilgiris, and closed down his own diesel station to source his power needs from here. He also decided to bring electricity to Thanjavur and Ramnad through diesel generators, to lay the necessary base for future hydro-electric projects.
The South Madras Electric Supply Corporation Limited (SMECL) was formed in 1940 by amalgamating Trichy-Srirangam Electric Supply Corporation Limited, the East Tanjore Electric Supply Corporation Limited and the East Ramnad Electric Supply Corporation Limited. The Ramnad Electric Supply Corporation Limited was taken over by the State Government in 1955, as part of the policy to nationalise public utilities.
The current supplied by SMECL served 12,000 square miles in and around Tiruchi.
It was handed over to the State Government on February 1, 1974.
In 1944, V. Seshasayee toured the U.S. and the Continent, which helped him to learn about aluminium cable production.
His firm became the managing agents of three chemical works. In the last years of his life, V. Seshasayee showed an interest in the Neyveli peat project (that would later lead to the Neyveli Lignite Corporation), a high voltage insulator factory and an engineering works.
Despite his lack of formal training, he was among the rare Indians in those days to become a Companion Member of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), of UK.
Among the companies established by V.S. were Mettur Chemical and Industrial Corporation Limited, Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Limited (FACT-Travancore), Aluminium Industry Limited of Kundara (ALIND – Kundara), Seshasayee Industries, Seshasayee Paper and Boards, Travancore Cochin Chemicals Limited and Forest Industries Travancore Limited.
To encourage a new generation of industrialists, he founded the Seshasayee Institute of Technology, which functioned briefly from a campus in Tennur, before it shifted to Ariyamangalam. (See related story below)
Endnote
Afflicted by asthma since his early 20s, V. Seshasayee managed to keep up his punishing schedule of work until 1958.
“By July, 1958, Father’s health had begun to fail,” recalls Mr. Venkatakrishnan. “On Monday, when I went to see him, he scribbled on a note, ‘Let Friday Pass’. By Sunday, October 19, he breathed his last. Perhaps he had an inkling that the end was near,” he adds.
Tributes poured in after V.Seshasayee’s demise from India and abroad, from the many people whose lives he had touched. At a public meeting held on October 30, 1958, Dr. E.P. Mathuram, Municipal Chairman, Tiruchi, formed a committee to commemorate the industrialist in a fitting manner. The idea of establishing an engineering college in his name was also mooted, but has yet to be fulfilled.
“At the industrial level, my father is remembered for his integrity,” says Mr. Venkatakrishnan. “It would be hard to find someone like him today.”
An achiever in many fields
The Seshasayee Institute of Technology (S.I.T) was started in 1952, with the help of a gift of Rs. 30,000 given to Mr. V. Seshasayee on his ‘sashtiapthapoorthi’ (60th birthday) by the people of Tiruchi. “He did not open the purse, but simply handed it over to H.K. Ramaswami, chief engineer in South Madras Electric Supply Corporation Limited (SMECL), and asked him to start a technical institute,” says S. Sudharssanam, honorary secretary, S.I.T.
Dr. Sudharssanam, former consul, Consulate General of India, New York, and G.M. Rajendran, retired general manager, BHEL, Tiruchi, compiled a booklet titled A Pioneering Visionary , on V.Seshasayee as part of the founder’s 125th birth anniversary celebrations last year. Both are S.I.T graduates and now serve as honorary secretaries at their alma mater.
“We decided to use only information with documentary evidence,” says Dr. Sudharssanam.
As the booklet notes, V. Seshasayee believed in corporate social responsibility even before the term was coined. Based on the reasoning that SMECL was not manufacturing and selling goods, but only distributing electricity bought from the government to the people, V.S. implemented a waiver of Rs. 1.5 lakh on the annual managerial remuneration due to the company under the Electricity Supply Act and limited it to Rs.80,000. This was beneficial both to shareholders and the public, and according to V.S., morally the right thing to do.
An active patron of the arts, the booklet details how V.S. had supported bodies like the Hindi Prachar Sabha, Rasika Ranjana Sabha and Tiruchi Tamil Sangam, besides being an active director of Trichinopoly Co-Operative Building Society (established in 1920).
He was also interested in Hindu philosophy, particularly in the in-depth study of the Ramayana .
