The tussle between BPL's grand old man TP Gopalan Nambiar and his son-in-law Rajeev Chandrashekhar has once again put in sharp focus the role of the patriarch in the group and his style of functioning.
The latest legal developments indicate that long after he handed over the baton of the flagship BPL Limited to his son Ajit Nambiar and the telecom business to Chandrashekhar, the reclusive magnate still calls the shots in the now struggling group.
At 75, TPG has seen both pioneering success and setback in large measure. His success is attributed to his clear vision. He always knew what he wanted.
Said a senior official who spent many years working closely with him: "In any of the meetings TPG used to chair, no time was wasted. He usually spoke with all of us before the meeting and based on the inputs, he would be absolutely ready on how to direct the course of the meeting and the result of it. There were no great debates in the board rooms. He usually would have made up his mind before a meeting began."
The recollection also points to his weakness. Says the same old timer, "Perhaps, TPG should have handled the large diversifying group more professionally. He did not manage the growth well and instead of handling the group as a high-powered enterprise, he treated it as a family business. He should have also managed his finances better."
But success came before setback and for a long time BPL was considered a national leader in consumer and professional electronics. At a time when most of the country's businesses made do with outdated technology, BPL became a technology leader and did things all the way themselves.
If there is anything TPG eschewed, then it was the screwdriver technology. In this highly laudable mindset also lay the seeds of the group's later troubles. It went into excessive backward integration without having the necessary volumes, which alone could make its foray into components a commercial success.
TPG was the original non-resident Indian (NRI) and probably the first hero of the reverse brain drain. He went to England and worked with the British Physical Laboratory and in 1963, armed with a post-graduate diploma in air-conditioning and refrigeration, started BPL India with a vision of pioneering the manufacturing of superior quality electronic products in the country.
This vision became a reality with the setting up of the country's first factory for the manufacture of hermetically-sealed precision panel meters in an industrially obscure Palakkad in Kerala.
Thus a tradition of firsts emerged, along with a commitment to quality in several product areas like ECGs, patient monitoring systems, electronic stencil scanners, carrier communication equipment, flat square tube televisions and critical components for colour TVs.
In these endeavours, he was assisted by KP Raghavan Nambiar. Through the Eighties and Nineties, when BPL's TV and VCR became household names in India for their technology and quality and its scientific equipment earned the respect of professionals, BPL in the UK gradually disappeared.
TPG understood technology, knew where to source it and how to absorb it. He was personally responsible for all international tie-ups, which included Sanyo of Japan, Siemens of Germany, US West of the US and Toshiba of Japan.
When liberalisation came and multinational TV majors posed a challenge to Indian brands, BPL was credited with the foremost chance of succeeding. It spent a fortune in promoting its brand and even till a few years ago it had a 15 per cent plus market share in TVs.
But industrial relations and being in too many areas took their toll, as did the cost of brand building. Excessive debt, working capital shortage and an inability to restructure led to a precipitous decline of the group. And now, going to court against his own son-in-law perhaps best symbolises the eclipse of the patriarch.
