Though he hailed from a business family, Jagannathan’s entry into the TTK group was accidental. A gold medalist from IIT Madras, Jagannathan was studying for a PhD in operations research at Cornell University and was all set to be an academic in the US. His parents, T T Narasimhan and Padma, arrived in the US in the early 1970s to give him a shocking news that the TTK group was in deep trouble. He was needed to fix things at home. Jagannathan returned in 1972 and at that time only three companies of the group were doing reasonably well, while 16 companies were incurring a net loss of Rs 80 lakh, a huge sum in those days. He turned around the group with a huge dose of common sense, as he would later recall.
Jagannathan’s seminal contribution to the Indian kitchen and the pressure cooker is the innovation of the gasket release valve, which ensured that pressure cookers would not burst due to steam buildup. In later years, TTK Prestige would be known for a host of kitchenware products, ranging from gas stoves to grillers, kettles and toasters, induction cooktops and a range of stainless steel non-stick cookware. The brand, TTK, is today a household name under his stewardship.
In the early part of this century, TTK Prestige was virtually on the block as TTJ found the company again in perilous financial circumstances. But, TTJ surmounted these odds as well to revitalise the company by expanding its product range so that it was no longer known as a pressure cooker company. Jagannathan, who was also a passionate and skilful cook, mentions in his book, co-authored with Sandhya Mendonca, Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Prestige Became a Billion Dollar Company, that TT Krishnamachari founded the group as a distributor of Lever products such as Sunlight and Lifebuoy soaps in 1928. Later, it added products of Beecham and Cadbury’s. By the mid-1940s, TTK & Co. distributed over 150 products.
Meanwhile, Krishnamachari entered politics in 1939 and left the group in the hands of his son, TT Narasimhan. In 1952, as a minister for commerce and industry in PM Nehru’s Cabinet, one of his first acts was to ban the import of non-essential consumer products as the country was short of foreign exchange. With the consumer goods distribution business cut at the base, Narasimhan decided that TTK would become a manufacturer. Waterman’s inks, Pond’s face powder, Woodward’s gripe water and Prestige pressure cookers were its first four products. If not for his own father, TTK’s fiat, the group may not have entered manufacturing at all. In the passing of T T Jagannathan, the Indian industry has lost an iconic and unconventional businessman. Many a kitchen will be in mourning.
