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| C.V.Balakrishnan, Managing Director, India Trimmings Pvt Ltd, Coimbatore |
Step-by-step transformation from an employee to the employer: the long thread of C.V.Balakrishnan’s career is a saga of perseverance, patience and astute business sense.
The young boy who dreamed of becoming a doctor, finally left for Mumbai for a job with a B.Com degree. There he worked for many years as auditor and at the same time continued his Chartered Accountancy (CA) course. CA eluded him but he met a genial Englishman Max Roden while working in a British firm at Mumbai. He invited Balakrishnan to UK. Although Balakrishnan did not take the offer seriously, the Englishman used to write to him about such offers even after reaching his country. Finally Balakrishnan requested the permission of his parents for the trip to UK.
After marriage: that was the verdict of the parents. So he got married to Saraswathy in 1963. Still the trip to UK had to wait till 1965. Soon after landing in UK, he joined a British company as Assistant Auditor, and simultaneously took up the study of Management Accounting and CA.
With his appointment as Cost Management Accountant in British Trimmings Company in 1972, he turned a new leaf in his career. And at the end of his 34-year-old stint with the company, he had become its CEO and MD.
Owing to labour problems in Britain, the company diversified its manufacturing units to India and China. The Indian unit was located by him at Coimbatore in 1997 with just 5 workers.
In the manufacturing and exporting of ‘Kunjalam’, an embroidery work, his India Trimmings is in the forefront. Of the 800 odd employees of the company, a good portion is differently-abled men and women. Separate units are run for such persons to avoid possible problems with ‘normally-abled’ employees.
His elder son Sreeram is with IBM at California and his younger son Ravi is an economist with IMF at Washington.
Courtesy:
M.B.Babu (text),
Mathrubhumi, August 28, 2006
Contributed by: Administrator
