Recently Ashok Leyland Ltd turned 70. It chose to celebrate the occasion by depicting the evolution of the company through an exhibition of its products and landmarks along with the parallel high points of the city, the state, and the nation. From the first product, the Austin car assembled by Ashok Motors, to the sophisticated Stallion for defence, the seven-decade journey was imaginatively showcased at the Chennai Trade Centre. Kudos to Siddharth Ganeriwala of Aura for collecting and displaying such a wonderful memorabilia.
The glitterati of business and the vast clientele of AL attended the reception. Addresses by Chairman Deeraj Hinduja, Co-Chairman G P Hinduja, Chairman Emiritus R J Shahaney and Managing Director Vinod Dasari were succinct and focused on the high points of the company. Among the memorable takeaways was the book of AAPKI JEET. HAMARI JEET handed to the guests while leaving. This coffee-table book was woven around the theme of Your Success. Our Success. Kudos to author Pradeep Chakravarthy, the corporate communication team and others for chronoclining so lucidly the evolution of AL.
Established in 1948 as Ashok Motors, the promoter, Raghunandan Saran, took bold to enter into a collaboration with British Leyland Motor Corporation to produce commercial vehicles. Through these decades AL maintained its lead as a major producer of buses for the numerous transport corporations spread across the nation as also medium and heavy commercial vehicles for truck operators and infrastructure projects. British Leyland was then among the technology leaders. The policy of indigenisation was seized by a number of entrepreneurs, to set up ancillary industries to supply components and other services.
A 56 year long association
My relations with AL began in 1962 when I launched the transport monthly Mobile. The inaugural issue had a report on AL and soon I also presented a detailed interview with then Managing Director, AEL Collins.
My bond with AL thickened in 1967. I was keen to visit Germany and Britain to look at the auto industry in those countries enjoying the post-war boom. Despite a large number of companies with British collaboration operating in Chennai, I couldn’t make much progress in getting the required contacts. My friend H B Stanford, Technical Director, Amalgamations Ltd, wrote to his friend at British Leyland requesting him to facilitate my visit to the Leyland Works. The friend was even more generous: “it won’t be worthwhile to visit UK for looking at just one plant,” he reasoned and took up the matter with the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders Ltd (SMMT), the association of auto producers of UK. SMMT agreed to provide me rich facilities like stay in star hotels, local transportation and visits to a dozen plants over two-weeks. These included the works of Rootes Motors, British Motor Corporation, Leyland Motors, Standard Triumph, Dunlop, Joseph Lucas, York Trailer, Edbro Tipper, J Payen and Tube Investments. SMMT told me that I was the first non–European journalist extended such a facility!
I also got similar facilities to spend another couple of weeks in West Germany to look closely at several large engineering units and Daimler Benz, Volkswagen, VBO…
