Coimbatore: Coming Of Age

Coimbatore has always been one of the richest places in India, thanks to its thriving farming and textile community. But now, the city seems to be emerging from the shadows of Chennai to become a business centre in its own right.

Lobbying is an extracurricular activity for which many of us don't have the time,'' says B. Vijayakumar as a matter of fact, explaining why Coimbatore's big industrialists like him are not to be seen in the corridors of business chambers such as FICCI and CII in Delhi. It is this single-minded focus on their business that has helped the city's entrepreneurs put themselves on India's business map, despite the fact that Coimbatore is literally the back of beyond.

That's also why despite the lingering crisis in its textile industry (it was once called the Manchester of South India), the city is moving ahead in business-and our rankings. Compared to the 1998 survey, Coimbatore's perceptual rank has jumped to No. 10 from 16, and its factual rank of 8 is better than those of Hyderabad (20) and Bangalore (15). Here's why: the city's teledensity per 1,000 is relatively high at 150; there's no load shedding, and the focus on software has forced the city to benchmark its facilities against those of Chennai and Bangalore.

Prior to the 1997 serial bomb blasts, the city was flourishing. Many viewed it the ''Dubai of India''. Hotels were doing booming business, and so did a range of other industries, including engineering, consumer goods, textiles and garments. After the blasts, however, the city lost a key market in Kerala, which having virtually no industry of its own, was sourcing goods from Coimbatore. Stricter vigil at the state border and the resulting bureaucracy deflected trade away from Coimbatore.

But now, there is some kind of a resurgence taking place. While the hospitality and textile businesses are still down (a big mill, Rajalakshmi Mills, has closed, and Lakshmi Mills retired two thirds of its workforce), those of electric motors, pumps, foundries, and consumer goods picked up this year. In fact, the local businessmen say that this Diwali was very good after a long time. ''We have good reason to believe that we have seen the worst, and that in the next six months there will again be an upswing,'' says Vijayakumar, CEO of L.G. Balakrishnan & Bros.

Software and auto-components are probably the industries that will propel Coimbatore's growth in the future. The state government is promoting software in Coimbatore in a big way and, therefore, extending help to the software technology parks in the city. On their part, software companies find the city's cool climate, abundance of technical manpower (some 7,000 engineers pass out each year from colleges in the city), and a low rate of attrition (the locals are typically family-oriented) incentives enough to set up shop here.

Companies like L.G. Balakrishnan are helping build what is being called south's Second Detroit (the first is Chennai). The adoption of manufacturing processes such as total quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance (TQM)-especially by more progressive companies such as L.G.-is making it easier for automobile manufacturers in Chennai like TVS Motor, Hindustan Motor, and Hyundai Motors to look for alternate suppliers in Coimbatore. ''In the last two years, there was a rush for the IT industry, but now manufacturing is beginning to find favour,'' notes C.R. Swaminathan, Managing Trustee of the well-known PSG Industrial Institute.

Biotechnology and retail are two new areas where interest is warming up in Coimbatore. But law and order, transportation, and healthcare need to improve if Coimbatore has to challenge its big sister, Chennai.

Jobs@coimbatore

Sunit Mehra, Sr. Partner, MESA Horton International
"The city is set for a 200% growth in software exports"

Coimbatore, the second-largest city in Tamil Nadu, is a thriving industrial city that has risen because of its sheer entrepreneurial spirit. Once known as the Manchester of South India, it has now evolved into a diversified engineering city.

The city accounts for the manufacture of 40 per cent of the auto components of Maruti Suzuki, TVS-Suzuki, Ambassador, and Fiat, and is getting better known as the Detroit of South India. The cool weather of the Palghat region of the Western Ghats is an added reason for the enhanced productivity that the city has enjoyed over the last decade.

Thanks to the state's focus on software, Coimbatore is developing into a thriving software city, and is currently poised for a 200 per cent growth in software exports. Its large number of premier educational and research institutions has attracted a host of multinational companies to set up their development centres in the city.