Venu Srinivasan, Emeritus Chairman of TVS Motor Company, born 1952

Venu Srinivasan is one of the grandsons of the founder of TVS Motor Company,  T. V. Sundaram Iyengar.  Under Venu's "watch" TVS (https://www.tvsmotor.com/en/ec/About-Us/overview) has grown to be the third-largest motorcycle company in India by revenue. TVS is also the second largest two-wheeler exporter in India with exports to over 60 countries.  In addition, he serves on the board of Tata Sons and as one of the vice-chairmen of Tata Trusts. He received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award in January 2020.Venu's wife Mallika Srinivasan is also a major Indian industrialist in her own right. She is the chairman and managing director of Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited founded in 1960 by her grandfather.  The company is commonly known as TAFE and is the second largest manufacturer of tractors in Indian after Mahindra and Mahindra.  The life story of the late chairman of Mahindra and Mahindra, Keshub Mahindra is also covered in this podcast series.TVS' relationship with General Motors of the US was also extremely important in the early growth of the company and many family members including Venu's father were sent to General Motors for training.  Venu refers to General Motors as "GM" in the podcast. You will also hear Venu refer to Professor Lord Bhattacharyya with huge respect and appreciation for his advice and assistance to TVS.  He was a British-Indian engineer, educator and government advisor. In 1980, he became Professor of Manufacturing Systems at the University of Warwick and founded the Warwick Manufacturing Group. In 2004, he was made a life peer and became a member of the House of Lords. He passed away in 2019 at the age of 79.Please note that these interviews took place some time ago - over 25 years ago in the case of the South East Asian life story book and around 10 to 15 years ago in the case of the two Indian life story books.  However, their stories are correct to the time of the interviews and the objective is to demonstrate the entrepreneurial skills they exhibited at the time of the interviews in building their businesses.