The FIRST non-family Managing Director of a TVS Group Firm
Sundaram Finance and Wheels India Founder TS Santhanam looked up to his Sethupathi High School classmate to manage Madras Auto Service in the 1940s and later on to drive the growth of Auto Components Firm Wheels India Ltd
World War II had arrived and was taking its toll. With TS Santhanam planning to move to Madurai, he was looking for someone to take care of Madras Auto Service (MAS), the subsidiary of TVS Group. And he went up to his Sethupathi High School classmate of the 1920s and asked him to take up an important accounting role at his Madras Trading firm. The 28year old could not refuse his childhood friend’s offer. The year 1942 marked the beginning of Valliyur Ramakrishnan Sivaraman’s long and fruitful association with the TVS Group. Decades later, Sivaraman’s elder son, a banker, was ‘asked’ to quit his bank job and join the TVS Group, an instruction that he quietly followed!!!
This writer met Sivaraman (known to friends and colleagues as VRS) at his Parthasarathy Street residence shortly after he turned 100 in March 2014. It had been a long and glorious journey. In the year leading up to his Centenary, his health condition had dipped a bit and he had become a little immobile but his memory, that he was so renowned for during his hey days, still remained razor sharp. He was able to easily recount in a flash events from his childhood days and the pleasant memories of competing with Santhanam at Sethupathi High School in Madurai.
Santhanam and Sivaraman lived in the same street in Madurai and were close friends. Interestingly, Santhanam’s mother (Lakshmi Ammal) and Sivaraman’s mother were neighbours in Nagercoil until the untimely death of Sivaraman’s mother when he was just nine years old. It was Lakshmi Ammal who provided motherly care to Sivaraman during those pressing times.
The Numbers Man - Gold Medalist in Maths
He was a gold medalist in Maths at College (he graduated from the American College, Madurai) and always has had a special liking for numbers. His family does not remember a single occasion when he used a calculator in his life (though one of his life’s regrets is of not doing medicine). Till well into his 90s, he spent time going through Balance Sheet of several of the Madras based companies and would immediately call the CFO with interesting insights.
In the days of saving phone numbers on the mobile, VRS remembered almost till the very end phone numbers of all his friends and relatives (he never saved the numbers on the mobile!!).
He moved to Madras in the mid 1930s taking up an accounting and audit role with Indian Postal Audit. During World War II, he shifted briefly to Coimbatore when there was large scale evacuation in Madras. Shortly after his stint in Coimbatore came the call from Santhanam.
Forging strong relationship with global manufacturers
Between 1942 and 47, it was Sivaraman who managed Madras Auto Service along with Govindachari and Panchapakesan while Santhanam was away in Madurai (Santhanam would only make fortnightly/monthly trips to Madras to oversee operations). VRS was assigned the important task of ‘cost control’ and managing profitability.
After Govindachari’s retirement, Sivaraman took over as the GM of Madras Auto Service (Vice President and President in the Indian Corporate world is a very recent phenomenon. For decades after independence GM was the most coveted position - next only to the MD). While Santhanam continued as the MD of the company, Sivaraman independently handled Madras Auto Service during the 1950s when it was a major importer of spare parts from Germany, UK and the US. His stint at MAS helped him forge strong relationships with major component manufacturers.
Glorious Years at Wheels India
Later that decade, TVS Group decided to set up a plant to manufacture wheels for Commercial Vehicles (Production commenced in 1962). Wheels India became the first manufacturing company of the TVS Group and marked the move of the group from trading to manufacturing. (Subsequently, TVS Group firms set up several manufacturing plants in the Padi area)
Sivaraman was the first one to be nominated from the Trading Company of the TVS Group to the manufacturing firm. Santhanam, who had roped him into MAS just under two decades ago, now asked him to join Wheels India to help drive growth in the initial phase.
S Ram, son of TS Santhanam and the current Chairman of Wheels India Ltd., took over as the MD from Sivaraman in October 1975 reminisces the entry of VRS into Wheels India and his role in that first decade and a half “Sivaraman had already spent close to two decades at Madras Auto Service and was an integral part of the management team. He had gathered a huge deal of experience in the auto sector during this period. My father called him one day and asked him to move to the new company that was being set up in Padi.'
‘I will find another replacement for you at MAS. You are needed at Wheels India’ Santhanam told VRS.
And thus Sivaraman moved from General Patters Road (his base at MAS) to the Western part of the city to the Padi headquarters of Wheels India. During the first 10years of Wheels India, Sivaraman, as the GM, anchored the acquisition of and building relationship with key customers.
Ram tracks the growth in customer base during those initial years to Sivarman’s strong customer relationship management ‘It was a very competitive phase. We were new entrants in the area of truck wheels. While we were one of the multiple suppliers to Telco and competing with other big players including European manufacturers, Sivaraman’s customer management skills helped us acquire a sizeable business from the truck major. Very quickly, we were able to improve our market share and Sivaraman had a significant role to play in that.’
VRS seen with S Ram and Japanese Delegates
There was a general reluctance on the part of Germans to try new Indian manufacturers but VRS helped build confidence amongst customers that the company was in for the long haul and that, from our base in Madras, we could compete with the best in the world. ‘He also had good relationship with other component manufacturers from South and North alike. During that initial 15year period, it was VRS who drove Wheels India’s growth.’
1st non family MD
Just over three decades after joining Santhanam at the TVS Group came the big moment of his corporate life. Just a few days short of his 60th birthday, Sivaraman was appointed as the Managing Director of Wheels India in February 1974, thus becoming the FIRST non family Managing Director of a TVS Group company. This was truly a significant achievement for a man who had by then established himself as an authority in the auto component sector.
By the end of his stint as the MD of Wheels India a year and a half later, the company had clocked a turnover of over Rs. 10 crores and had established a strong long term customer base that include the biggest of names such as Telco, Mahindra, TAFE and Premier Automobiles, among others, and an employee strength of 250. During his association with the TVS Group, he travelled extensively around the world on business to almost all countries except China and Russia. He also served as the president of ACMA (Auto Component Manufacturers Association) and CII (Confederation of Indian Industry).
He paid a lot of attention to physical and mental fitness. For three decades from the 1970s, Sivaraman walked an hour every day, many times up to Thanithurai Market (on RK Mutt Road) and walked back (with vegetables in hand) to his home on Parthasarathy Street, off Kasturi Rangan Road.
Interest in IPL even in his 90s
His interest in cricket (he was a left hand opening batsman during his college days) did not recede one bit and he was avid follower of the IPL. He also served as the President of Madras Hockey Association. All his life, he had been a voracious reader with a special liking for fiction especially detective stories. He kept track of the global developments especially in the auto sector and would read six newspapers every morning!!! After his retirement from Wheels India, VRS was involved with a number of start ups in Madras in an advisory role helping them see through the tough initial phase of growth. And he went out of the way to help truly deserving candidates with employment in Madras based companies.
It was on the strong foundation laid by Sivaraman in the 1960s and early 70s that Wheels India grew into one of the world’s leading steel wheel manufacturers and now finds itself topping revenues of Rs. 2000 crores with a global customer base and multiple plants across the country.
(Sivaraman passed away in 2015 aged 101)
This story is a version of the Magazine story this writer had written on the occasion of VRS' Centenary in 2014