Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
The Ramakrishna/n eras
S. MUTHIAH
FOR THIRTY years, a Ramakrishnan and a Ramakrishna steered the fortunes of Larsen & Toubro's construction company, Engineering Construction and Contracts (ECC), Madras, and made it an Indian construction giant that is beginning to go international.
Cheyyur Ramaswamy Ramakrishnan, an agriculture graduate, was the first from a traditional zamindari family to enter `service', joining L&T in 1947. An outstanding marketing and organisation systems man, he took charge of ECC in 1975. When he retired in 1991, he had taken ECC's turnover from Rs. 110 million to Rs. 4,400 million and in the intervening period had not only taken the company overseas, but had completed such prestigious projects as the Abu Dhabi Airport, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Maharashtra Legislative Council and that `modern Taj Mahal', the Bahaii Temple in Delhi.
A. Ramakrishna, a civil engineer who joined ECC in 1964, took over from his mentor CRR. When AR retired a couple of months ago midst felicitations that are still continuing, he had made ECC the biggest construction company in India, taken it into the ranks of the world's top 100 building contractors, begun focussing on investing in infrastructure in India and abroad. AR who had specialised in precast-prestressed concrete in Germany, remembers that among the first projects he was involved with in Madras on his return from Germany were the Round Tana (Anna Statue) subway with its arched roof and the Devi Theatre, which started as a home for two 70 mm cinemas but grew while under construction to hold a third cinema, preview theatre and a roof garden. Both were projects to ECC designs and pushed the company into the design-and-construct business.
Both CRR and AR had worked with the Danish founders and their Scandinavian managers. A unique culture had been developed in those days — and their successors will now have the benefit of putting that heritage to good use in a more builder-friendly environment.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
