Circulation Department The Hindu Anna Salai, Chennai, Tamil Nadu

This transformation comes with the strong belief that the fest will set the stage for a business ecosystem comprising the strengths of the three independent events while leveraging on the synergies that such a union would bring about.The fest is to be held from September 29 to October 2 and will witness stalwarts from the business world coming together at the campus amidst an expected footfall of over 20,000, to give their insights on the various facets of the business world.

The ad captured the essence of the Nataraj brand — the pencil gave a better grip, it would not break and it would write for a longer period than all the rest, it wouldn’t smudge, the lead was blacker and clearer, and the flow, smoother. And because the lead used was ‘bonded lead’, one was assured of getting ‘pointy points’ after sharpening the pencils, as another of their ads proclaimed. It followed, naturally, that all children wanted to use only Nataraj pencils. The Nataraj 621 HB pencil was the most popular then — and continues to be in demand today.Before Independence, pencils were manufactured in India, but the industry faced stiff competition from imports. The pre-World War II (1939-40) years saw pencils worth about 6.5 lakhs imported into India from countries such as the UK, Germany and Japan. The numbers fluctuated during the war years, finally dipping to 2.3 lakhs during 1944-45, and this gave the indigenous market a boost. Several pencil manufacturers sprang up across the country in places such as Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (now Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai).

In the 1990s, the brand split three ways into Haldiram Manufacturing (Delhi), Haldiram Bhujiawala Haldiram’s Prabhuji (Kolkata), and Haldiram Foods Haldiram’s Nagpur (Nagpur).While the first focuses on markets in the north, the second serves the east, and the third caters to western and southern markets. Not many people know there are three entities operating in different geographical locations under the same name.

The product came from the stable of the ‘Mysore Products and General Trading Company (MP>C)’, which was founded by philanthropist and entrepreneur N Ranga Rao in the State of Mysore (now Mysuru), in 1948. The founder initially invested in units to manufacture soap nut powder (shikakai) and hair oil; he also procured agarbattis (joss, incense or prayer sticks) and resold them after packaging and branding them.Very soon, he zeroed in on the light-weight agarbattis as the best product to manufacture and proceeded to learn all he could about the business from books, people in the perfumery business, and other sources. The brand name ‘Cycle’ was supposedly chosen for easy recognition and recall, as it was pronounced and understood the same way in all Indian languages. The brand is today known as ‘Cycle Pure Agarbattis’.