The seeds of innovation sown by Gokuldas Thulsidas is continuing to help the region create wealth out of waste.

Thulsidas Murarjee and his brother Keshavlal were Gujarati merchants from Porbander. In the 19th Century, They travelled between Porbander and Calicut and traded in nuts and silk from Persia and took back spices and tiles to Gujarat. It took them more than 10 days to do a one way trip in those days. On one such trip a storm delayed their return and they decided to visit Coimbatore. They liked the city and decided to settle down here. They lived in Vysial street and began trading in cottonseeds by procuring them from Pollachi. More than 100 years ago, they established Thulsidas Murarjee & Company and thus began their business tryst with Coimbatore.

Thulsidas Murarjee had five sons and two daughters. The third and fourth sons, Gokuldas Thulsidas and Narsi Thulsidas continued with the firm. Gokuldas (1904 -1957) travelled on his motorbike to Pollachi for his work. He was an innovative entrepreneur. He used cottonseed waste as fillers in pillows and mattresses.

Gokuldas was an excellent communicator who quoted extensively from the Thirukkural. He also spoke fluent Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, besides Gujarati. He had only studied only till the fifth standard. Gokuldas or Babu Sait as he was popularly known married Kesaribai from Calicut and the couple had one daughter and three sons – Suresh, Pratap and Arun. They lived Vysial street, spent a few years in Race Course before moving permanently to R.S.Puram.

Gokuldas tied up with some foreigners who wanted cotton waste to make coarse yarn used in the manufacture of jeans. He procured and exported cotton waste from mills in Tamil Nadu and these included Rajapalayam Mills, C.S & W Mills, Lakshmi Mills, Radhakrishna Mills and Pioneer Mills. He exported cotton waste to USA, UK, Italy and Germany prior to the World War II. Later in 1951 he went to England and furthered his business knowledge. He was a pioneering Coimbatorean who unlocked the commercial potential of cotton waste in South India. Thanks to this vision and ability Thulsidas Murarjee & Company made a fortune those days.

Gokuldas acquired the Managing Agency of Sharadha Mills during the early years of independence. The doyen of South Indian industry R.Venkataswamy Naidu was also associated with this venture and a dividend was declared within two years of their administration. Gokuldas visited the silk mills located in various parts of our country and studied their potential.

Septugenarian Suresh fondly recalls his father, “My father was a workaholic and he took very good care of his family, employees and clients. He wanted me to learn business after my school education (Stanes School), but he passed away early. He built a maternity home in his mother Ramkurbai’s name in R.S.Puram. He promised my mother Kesaribai that he would build a school and temple.

The Kikani family took this dream forward. We built the Satyanarayana Temple in R.S.Puram within a year of his death in order to make his dream come true. He was the agent for the global major Snia Viscose of Italy and motivated mills to use viscose yarn that was unheard of those days. He guaranteed returns to the early users of viscose. Balasubramanya Mills was his first customer.

The Italian Directors of Snia Viscose, Dr.Spinelly and Cesar Rossi, often came home and ate with us. My father was an active Rotarian and was associated with the Rotary Club of Coimbatore and an avid Bridge player. He was very close to a number of leading mill owners such as G.K.Devarajulu, S.R.P.Ponnuswamy Chettiar, Karumuttu Thiagaraja Chettiar, G.R.Govindarajulu and others from across the country. He had excellent overseas contacts and several large ventures were born in Coimbatore as a result of his networking.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Rajesh Govindarajulu / June 19th, 2015

Chennai :

TAKE Solutions — a Chennai-based global business technology solutions provider — has been awarded a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its clinical data standardization process.

The process, delivered by Navitas — the life sciences arm of TAKE Solutions — is referred to as “Method for Optimizing Clinical Data Standardization.”

This process captures data from clinical trials coming in different formats and leverages TAKE’s clinical accelerator systems to standardize the data.

According to TAKE, the patented process is capable of reducing the time taken to standardize trial data, thus simplifying the analysis process by regulators and also reducing time to market.

“The process includes various pre-defined steps that convert raw data into tabular data sets. This enables regulators to easily understand the data, as well as enables easy analysis of trial data,” TAKE Solutions said in a statement.

“The clinical data and regulatory service accounts for almost 30% of our life sciences business and we expect the patented process to reduce cost of providing the services by around 20%,” Srinivasan H R, vice-chairman and MD of TAKE Solutions, told TOI.

TAKE’s clinical data and regulatory services team offers clinical data solutions, including clinical data standardisation, clinical data management, statistical programming and data standards.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India /Home> City> Chennai / by Sindhu Hariharan, TNN /June 25th, 2015