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The sad end of another era
CLOSING DOWN by the end of this month is a business house that was once a legend in commercial Madras, which has, however, become a forgotten name in recent years. The closing down of V. Perumal Chetty & Sons comes some years after its Madras Pencil Factory was disposed off and Hoe & Co. was closed down, both legends in their time. With the last of these closures, there comes to a sad end to an era that began in 1840 when V. Perumal Chetty started a small business on Stringer Street in what was then `Black Town's' China Bazaar.
Starting with retailing stationery, V. Perumal Chetty soon became the leading wholesaler for several stationery items in the Madras Presidency. An advertisement at the turn of the 19th Century proclaimed that it was "the largest" stationery house "in Southern India" and stocked in large quantities "writing and printing paper, note paper and envelopes, fancy stationery, pencils and pens, stylo and fountain, mathematical instruments, artist's colours, toilet requisites, traveller's cases, fancy goods, copying presses, typewriters, duplicating apparatus, leather bags, account and memorandum boxes, office cash and dispatch boxes, Gladstone bags, steel trunks and other stationery sundries".
Opportunity to expand the firm's activities knocked in 1886 when a friend across the street was in trouble with his business. Hoe & Co., a small printing press, was owned by a Chinese and not a Briton, as many have been inclined to think. And Hoe, in financial difficulties, wanted to sell his press. Perumal Chetty's sons, V. Alwar Chetty, V. Ramanujulu Chetty and V. Ethirajulu Chetty decided to take it over, as much to help a friend as in sensing an opportunity. And Hoe & Co., benefiting from what a partner, Rao V. Thiruvengadathan Chetty, saw happening in the printing industry during his frequent visits abroad, soon became known as the `Premier Press' in the Presidency.
The next acquisition of V. Perumal Chetty & Sons was a pencil factory just before the Great War broke out in 1914. Starting with the `Star of India' pencils, the Madras Pencil Factory was to develop more than 100 brands in the years between the Wars. Ajantha, Spectrum and, above all, Kohinoor were brands that became indelible in public memory.
With the three business enterprises not only complementing each other, but also showing the way in their respective fields, V. Perumal Chetty & Sons was on a good wicket. Making it a better wicket to play on was a fourth activity for which the firm was once best known. As `Railway dubashes', the firm was `the complete supplier, outfitter and auctioneer' for the South Indian Railways. It had a tailoring unit which made uniforms for the entire personnel of the SIR, it ran an auctioneering unit to handle the lost property found on the SIR trains and the SIR's scrap, and it was the accredited printer and supplier of stationery for the SIR.
In fact, Hoe & Co. was the largest supplier of stationery and printed material to the Presidency's municipalities, district boards and local funds besides being "printers by appointment of His Excellency the Governor of Madras".
The nationalisation of the Railways in 1956, changing business rules after Independence, ban on imports and greater competitiveness in an expanding post-1960s market had a negative impact on what was essentially a conservative business house lacking the aggressiveness necessary in the new age. The loss of the SIR business, the Madras Presidency's break-up leading to civic organisations preferring to buy locally, the popularisation of the ball point pen and the spectacular growth of offset printing led to the company closing, first, Hoe & Co., then transferring ownership of the Madras Pencil Factory and, now, saddest of all, closing down of V. Perumal Chetty & Sons itself.
But even before the end of this era, Madras had lost one of its symbols — the Hoe & Co. diary. First published in 1912, the diary with its wealth of information became a `must' not only in every office but also in many a household too. In an age which appears to want less information and the cost benefits of mass production, the Hoe & Co. diary gradually began to lose the aura of `essentiality' it once enjoyed and faded in the 1990s, though it survived Hoe & Co. itself. With the diary, the company's most visible symbol no longer in print, it was only a matter of time before the flagship would sink into oblivion too. But while it floated, what a splendid century and a score V. Perumal Chetty & Sons had enjoyed!
S. MUTHIAH
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