Staying resilient in the face of adversity

“Everything in my life came by accident, which is perhaps why I have always cherished this line from Shakespeare: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,’” TT Jagannathan, Chairman of the 90-year-old TTK Group, tells us. 

The TTK group was established by and named after TT Krishnamachari (or TTK as he was affectionately known), Jagannathan’s grandfather, back in 1928. The company started as indenting agents for two leading players in the market and primarily dealt with soaps and oils. 

TTK joined politics in the late 1930s and the mantle of the business passed on to the next generation, namely Jagannathan’s father. Within a year of his assuming charge, the Second World War broke out, and one of the players decided to sever ties with all middlemen in India and began to go to market directly. Thus, the group’s fortunes were based on their arrangement with one company only. The country went through a prolonged period of economic turmoil and TTK, the then Commerce Minister, banned imports of consumer products, which impacted the business significantly. The period of transition from distribution to manufacturing began and Prestige Pressure Cookers was one of the first few products to be manufactured in India. 

On his journey, Jagannathan had this to say: “My mother has had a profound impact on my personal and professional life. In fact, she was the one who motivated me to work hard and told me that I should top the IIT batch. And sure enough, I won the Gold medal at IIT Madras and went on to pursue higher studies at Cornell University. I was certain that I would settle down in the United States.” However, the TTK Group’s losses were mounting, when he was called back to take over the family business by his father. 

On coming back, he faced huge challenges. The business had a highly leveraged balance sheet, borrowing was at high interest rates, and the company was unable to pay in time and was borrowing more money to service the interest. In Jagannathan’s TT Jagannathan Chairman, TTK Prestige Limited 46 | PwC India Family Business Survey 2019 words, “Living in debt had become the new normal.” He wanted to sell off the business, but no one wanted to buy a debt-laden company. Moreover, the staff was against the management. 

As Jagannathan puts it, “This was perhaps one of the most challenging times in my career but I was determined to set things right and I did this by falling back on my engineering mind and by using common sense. I got full support from my mother who took charge of the business in Chennai. I decided to first take on the business which was making maximum losses (maps and atlases) and with all the controls we put in place, we managed to turn it around in 2 years. It remained profitable till 2015, only to be knocked out by Google Maps!” 

Over the next three decades, all group companies were turned around one by one – a few loss-making companies were sold and a decision was taken to focus completely on the pressure cooker business. The company also acquired the Prestige brand from the UK and worked to rebuild it. A big breakthrough came when the company designed (and later patented) a pressure release solution to avoid accidents. 

In 2002, the TTK Group became a debt-free company. 

The group emphasises the need to innovate and be ahead digitally and recognises that this is an evolving area for them. Today, the group is professionally run with non-family members at decisionmaking levels. There has been a conscious decision not to involve family members in the day-to-do working to a large extent. Jagannathan explains, “It would be fantastic if the next gen of TTK is keen to join the business but as of now, my three sons are busy with different careers and I am happy to support and back them in whatever they want to do. Positive business growth requires a certain amount of time, skill sets and market opportunities, and it helps to have professionals from diverse backgrounds to run the business. The TTK Group is completely run by professionals today and I do not see this changing in the foreseeable future. People tend to think that family-run businesses do not give importance to hiring the right professional talent. Nothing could be further from the truth. Finding the right talent is important when the business is run professionally. All hiring of senior management is done by me personally. However, over the last 25 years, I have not had to hire anyone at senior levels as they have remained with us throughout.”