How Research Into Brahmi Script Helped Birth Titan

The web series Made In India: A Titan Story, released last week on Amazon MX Player, revisits the improbable rise of Titan Company (earlier Titan Industries), a joint venture between the Tata Group and Tamil Nadu’s state-run TIDCO.

While the vision of JRD Tata and the diligent execution of Xerxes Desai are undeniable pillars of the Titan saga, the historical record risks being incomplete if it eclipses the critical contributions of the other partner, TIDCO. Specifically, the real-world genesis of Titan as a watch factory in Hosur (ironically chosen for its proximity to Bangalore) rests on the shoulders of two extraordinary gentlemen from the Tamil Nadu bureaucracy: Iravatham Mahadevan and AL Mudaliar.

One helped in the project being conceived and brought the Tatas into it. The other provided stability, credibility and leadership during Titan’s formative years. Both deserve a larger place in the Titan story than they are usually accorded.

The epigraphist who connected the dots

To understand how Titan was born, one must first understand Iravatham Mahadevan. He was a legendary epigraphist and a world authority on the Brahmi and Indus scripts, whose academic texts remain the definitive primers on the subject today.

His intellectual interests also placed him at the centre of the Ayodhya issue. It was Mahadevan’s moral support that encouraged archaeologist KK Muhammed to publicly discuss archaeological findings relating to the existence of structures beneath the Babri Masjid that were sought to be hidden by Left-leaning historians.

Yet none of this suggested that Mahadevan would one day help launch a watch company. His journey was unconventional. After earning a degree in chemistry, he studied law and briefly practised as an advocate. Then came a dramatic career shift. He appeared for the civil services examination and emerged as Tamil Nadu’s topper in 1954.

Initially, he wanted to join the Indian Foreign Service. Three months into training, however, he changed his mind and sought a transfer to the Indian Administrative Service. The bureaucracy resisted. But the young probationer responded with characteristic gumption. He wrote directly to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and his request was granted.

From ancient inscriptions to modern industry

While building a successful administrative career, Mahadevan increasingly immersed himself in epigraphy. His work on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions attracted widespread scholarly attention. In 1965, he published important findings on the Sangam-age Chera inscriptions discovered at Pugalur.

In 1970, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust awarded him a two-year fellowship to work on deciphering the Indus script. The project demanded technological resources that few scholars in India had access to. To analyse large collections of symbols and inscriptions, Mahadevan required sophisticated computing facilities.

During the 1970s, such facilities were rare. One of the few places equipped for the task was the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay. The research also required specialised printing capabilities to reproduce unfamiliar symbols and scripts accurately. Thus began a series of visits to the Tata facilities in Bombay during the late 1970s.

Neither Mahadevan nor his hosts could have guessed where those visits would lead.

The sandwich lunch that changed Indian industry

Dr Mathai Joseph, then head of the computer facility at TIFR, recognised Mahadevan’s printing dilemma and set up a meeting with Xerxes Desai, who was then running Tata Press. Desai, an Oxford-educated executive with fire in his belly, had been handed the reins of Tata Press in 1975 to turn it around and was actively searching for new corporate avenues.

The meeting between the scholar-bureaucrat and the ambitious corporate executive proved unexpectedly consequential. As Mahadevan’s research progressed, he visited the Tata facilities repeatedly. During one of their conversations, famously over a lunch of sandwiches, Desai reportedly mentioned that the Tata Group was actively looking for a major new industrial venture.

Mahadevan, who was concurrently serving as a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Industrial Development and also headed a task force on watch manufacturing, invited the Tata representatives to New Delhi. There, the Tatas had a choice of five different industrial projects to get into. One of them was the manufacture of watches. This was on 16 March 1977.

The idea appealed to the Tatas enormously, as they themselves had ideas for the same. But there was only one problem. Actually, there were several.

A project trapped in red tape

India’s industrial licensing regime in the 1970s was notoriously labyrinthine. Watch manufacturing was reserved for the small-scale private sector, and large business houses such as the Tata Group were effectively excluded. The irony here was that the government-run HMT was already manufacturing watches. But a large private-sector player was not allowed to enter the field.

Such policy constraints, licensing restrictions and difficulties in identifying an overseas technology partner repeatedly slowed Tata’s progress, and for a few years, the project appeared stuck.

But history intervened once again. And once again, Mahadevan happened to be in exactly the right place.

Back to Tamil Nadu

By the late 1970s, Mahadevan had returned to his home cadre in Tamil Nadu. It was also the time the State was aggressively pursuing industrialisation. In 1979, TIDCO, whose managing director was Mahadevan, was exploring several major projects, including watch manufacturing. Discussions had already begun with a France-based foreign company regarding technical collaboration. The missing piece in the jigsaw was a capable Indian partner.

Recognising the potential fit immediately, Mahadevan reached out to the Tatas and invited the group to join as a partner in the proposed venture in September 1979. The idea made perfect sense. TIDCO could provide State support and institutional backing. The Tata Group could bring managerial expertise, credibility and long-term vision.

Even then, the progress remained slow. Approvals had to be secured, regulations navigated, partnerships structured. As it happened, only in July 1984 did the effort finally culminate in the formal incorporation of Titan.

The story often appears inevitable in retrospect. In reality, as you can see, it was anything but.

Had Mahadevan not happened to be in Bombay during his epigraphic research, had he not occupied a strategic position in New Delhi, and had he not later returned to Tamil Nadu to head TIDCO, the chain of events might easily have broken at several points.

Characteristically, Mahadevan always downplayed his contribution, preferring to credit colleagues and successors who carried the project forward. But without him, it is tempting to say, the Titan story would almost certainly have unfolded very differently.

Enter AL Mudaliar

If Mahadevan was the catalyst, AL Mudaliar became the stabilising force.

When Titan’s board was formally constituted in 1985, TIDCO insisted that its representative should serve as the chairman (it is still the case even today). The Tata Group agreed, but with one important caveat: the chairman should not be a political appointee.

The concern was understandable, as public-private joint ventures across India had often suffered from political interference and weak governance. Luckily, Tamil Nadu responded by proposing the name of AL Mudaliar.

He was an inspired choice. He was the son of the legendary Dr Arcot Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, the longest-serving Vice-Chancellor of Madras University (27 years), principal of Madras Medical College, and the inaugural chairman of IIT Madras. (In a quirky twist of history, no public online records clarify what the ‘AL’ in the son’s name stands for, meaning father and son effectively shared the exact same public moniker.)

The family produced several other luminaries. One brother, Arcot Venugopal, was a renowned surgeon and was one of the two who operated on MG Ramachandran after he was infamously shot in his throat. Another brother, A Ramachandran, served as the second Director of IIT Madras.

But AL Mudaliar had his own formidable credentials. Armed with degrees in science and chemistry from the University of Madras, he joined Imperial Chemical Industries in England in 1949.

Over the next three decades, he steadily climbed the corporate ladder. In 1974, he became Group Deputy Chairman, and from 1976 to 1984 served as Chairman of the ICI group of companies in India. He also held top positions on numerous corporate boards and acquired a reputation for professionalism, administrative rigour and strategic judgement.

By the time Titan was born, he had accumulated precisely the kind of experience required to guide a young industrial venture.

The Chairman Titan needed

AL Mudaliar assumed the chairmanship in 1985 and remained in that position until 2001. Those were not ceremonial years. They encompassed Titan’s most critical period: the establishment of manufacturing operations in Hosur, the launch of the first watches, expansion into many new markets, battles against scepticism and competition, and the transformation of the company into a trusted consumer brand.

The choice of Hosur itself reflected Titan’s pragmatic instincts. Located in Tamil Nadu but adjacent to Bangalore, it offered access to talent (poached from HMT), infrastructure and connectivity while allowing the State government to anchor a major manufacturing investment within Tamil Nadu.

The Tatas, known for their exacting standards, reportedly found in AL Mudaliar a chairman whose professionalism matched their own expectations. Under his stewardship, the public-private partnership functioned remarkably well. It was no small achievement in an era when many such ventures struggled.

Titan’s success is often attributed to Tata vision and execution, but the contributions of TIDCO and its representatives were decisive. Mahadevan’s scholarly pursuit of ancient scripts inadvertently opened doors to industrial collaboration, while AL Mudaliar’s corporate gravitas stabilised the fledgling joint venture. Together, they ensured Titan was not merely a Tata triumph but a Tamil Nadu story too.