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 One
of the makers of modern India, T T Krishnamachari was the
son of a district judge. He chose to be different from the
usual middle-class crop who were either lawyers, teachers
or Government servants. He wanted to be businessman.
Starting at 20, he became an apprentice under A R Doraisami
Iyengar, who was running an indenting firm in Madras
representing the Lever brothers, selling soap and oil.
TTK had a highly successful sales career, selling soap door
to door. The popularity of Sunlight soap in the South can
be credited to the efforts of TTK. After the death of
Doraisami Iyengar in 1928, TTK was awarded the agency by
Lever Brothers. In that year he set up T T Krishnamachari &
Co.
TTK changed the very nature of selling as it was known
then. From booking indents, he moved the company to
stocking and selling directly to dealers in several towns.
This meant the opening of depots, setting up a sales
organisation, and introducing new accounting practices. The
concept of redistribution, of taking the goods from dealers
to retailers was introduced by TTK & Co. What seems
commonplace today were all TTK's daring innovations. He
conducted market survey to study customer preferences, he
adopted unique methods of sales promotion and advertising
like skywriting, distributing leaflets by air-dropping
them, giving away attractive calendars. TTK realised the
potential of rural marketing decades ago. He organised
rural fairs and melas and prize schemes to attract
customers.
The company was well established by mid-thirties and in
1936, he entered politics. Once he joined the Congress, he
gave up everything else and went on to lay the foundations
for the economic and industrial infrastructure of the
country. He was a member of the draft committee of the
Indian Constitution. He was also the Union Minister of
Commerce and Industry (1952-56) and Iron and Steel
(1955-57). But it was as Finance Minister in Jawaharlal
Nehru's Union Cabinet (1963-65) that he made his biggest
contributions to the nation.
TTK was a connoisseur of Art and Music. The Music Academy,
Chennai, owes much of its present relevance to the
initiative of this man. Fittingly, its main auditorium
bears his name.
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