Mr Ganesh says that he got ‘stuck’ in Thiruvananthapuram or else he would have made more strides
P. Ganesh with his wife Sudha. (Photo: DC)
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a chance encounter with an old friend in a train that changed the life of P. Ganesh for ever. In 1986 when Ganesh was working for Kolkata-based Hindustan Safety Glass Works Ltd in Chennai that he bumped into the friend who said that a Mumbai-based glass company was looking for a project engineer for the upcoming Co-bank Towers, the first high rise glass building in Thiruvananthapuram. Thereafter, Mr Ganesh took over the glass trade business started by his grandfather, the late M.V. Ganapathy Iyer, as early as in 1905.
Mr Ganesh, 53, is chief executive and chief promoter of six companies — Glass and Glazing Systems Pvt. Ltd, ETL Interiors and Gefab Façade Solutions Pvt. Ltd at Kochuveli Industrial estate, Metacoats Aluminium Pvt Ltd at Manvila Industrial estate, SGE- Dorma (certified business partner with a German company) and Sree Ganesh Enterprises.
Though Ganesh started his first company as a micro enterprise in 1987 with just six people on board, it has now evolved into a 350-strong force with an annual turnover of Rs 30 crore.
With sales and marketing offices in Kochi, Chennai and Bengaluru, Mr Ganesh has to travel a lot.
Mr Ganesh says that he got ‘stuck’ in Thiruvananthapuram or else he would have made more strides. A mechanical engineer from College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, Mr Ganesh belongs to the 1984 batch. Son of the late G. Padmanabhan and the late S. Neelayadakshi, Ganesh says his father was hesitant when he told him that he was returning to the capital city for good.
“But at the end of the day, you have to find the pluses and minuses. I don’t have regrets in life. Malayalis are cynical and if I had put in the same effort in my business in some other state, the scale of operation would have been eight to ten times more,” said Mr Ganesh who has established as a solution provider in façade engineering with over five million square feet of glazing in buildings so far.
But Mr Ganesh, former chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry in 2010-11, says for the last couple of years, the business scene in Kerala has been changing for good.
His wife is Sudha, a music therapist who provides free service, a close family friend, whom he married in 1988 and they have settled down here. Their elder son, Koushik Ganesh, an industrial engineer from CET, took over the fourth generation business in 2011. They have a younger son, Aashik Ram Ganesh, doing second-year B. Arch at CAT, Thiruvananthapuram.
Sudha, 52, is a classmate of playback singer K.S. Chitra. They studied in College of Women, Thiruvananthapuram, and they end up singing together whenever they meet now. She recalled that it was fun to live in a large joint Brahmin orthodox family, but her singing was confined to just the four walls of the house then. But when the couple decided to move out of the family house, he wanted his parents to accompany them.
“My husband has never stopped me from pursuing a career in music. After my children grew up, I pursued M.Phil in music and am now keen on doing research as I have been providing practical music therapy. My students include those affected by autism, Parkinson’s disease (her own late father-in-law), mentally and physically challenged and BP patients”, said Sudha who recently won this year’s Suvarna Nalappat Trust award.
Each music therapy session of Sudha lasts for 30-45 minutes and one of her autistic students improved her behavioural traits. Sudha has been a B+grade singer with All India Radio and her favourite singers are M.S. Subbulakshmi and K.S. Chitra.
Now Sudha is on a mission to meet the promise given to her late parents, Rama Aiyar, retired public relations deputy director and Nagalakshmy, to get a PhD in music therapy.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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