Saturday, May 13, 2017

OLD MADRAS ROAD 8: SWADESI TYPE FOUNDRY



Not much is known today about this business which was founded in 1906 by T.Arumugam Mudaliar. The head office was at No.51, Guruvappa Chetty Street, Chintadripet. The foundry was inaugurated by the legendary V.O.Chidambaram Pillai. Over time, the business opened branches at Bangalore and Hyderabad.

A brochure published in the 1960s gives us some information about its functioning. According to it, their “Swadesi Home” label produced types in fifteen languages (which included Sinhalese, Devanagari and Grantham!!). The firm was also the inventor of the famous “Ganapathy Tamil Series”. It was an approved contractor to the Government of India, even supplying election blocks for various State elections such as the 1962 Gujarat and Bihar Assembly Elections, the 1967 Bihar Elections etc.

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