It may be the parry connection, but I know there must be a history angle to a visit to EID Parry's sugar factory at Nellikuppam, 14 km from Cuddalore, a seaside town in Tamil Nadu, even before I leave Chennai. Parry's Corner-where EID Parry's HQ, Dare House, is located-is a Chennai landmark, the terminus for countless buses, the beginning of what must once have ranked as one of the most scenic esplanades in the world. This, wrote Chennai's best-known historian S. Muthiah, was where French commander Comte de Lally based his artillery while laying siege to Fort St. George in 1758-59. And this is where Dare House, a building in the then prevalent art-deco style, came up in 1940 (according to Muthiah, the top storeys were leased to the American consulate, the Madras Chamber of Commerce and the European Association, the forerunner to the European Union). Indeed, if history were a currency, then EID Parry would perhaps be the most valuable Indian company traded on that exchange.

Glimpses of EID Parry's sugar mill at Nellikuppam (clockwise from extreme left): The old brick chimney; inside view of the sugar mill; the old warehouse; East India Company's Factory House in Old Cuddalore

The Murugappa Group acquired EID Parry in the early 1980s, and being no stranger to history itself (that, though, is another story, and one about which Muthiah has written extensively, as indeed he has about those other Chennai institutions, Simpson and Co. and Spencer & Co.-both, incidentally, are like Parry's Corner, names assigned to bus stops in the city), has been punctilious in its recognition and preservation of it.

My first brush with history at the Nellikuppam sugar factory that dates back to 1845-it is one of the oldest sugar factories in the world, if not the oldest operational one-is at the entrance, where a burnished, well-preserved A7 W. Smith & Cold (Glasgow) engine sits. The engine was installed in 1941, retired in 1993, weighs 55 tonnes, and crushed some 210 lakh tonnes of sugarcane in its lifetime. It isn't just history the engine looks upon, although there is enough of that commodity: the old godowns, a tall brick chimney that dates back to 1845, the adjacent A.J. Yorke Club, and colonial bungalows. It also looks upon a petri dish of technological and economic innovation. The farmers and the company are connected through a revolutionary cordect network, a low-cost wireless technology created by IIT, Madras' TeNet group headed by Ashok Jhunjhunwala. And the company's balanced approach to optimise profits both for itself and the farmers who supply it with sugar cane has come in for praise from management guru C.K. Prahalad in his newest book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. These, though, are in the realm of news, not history, which is what I have been assigned to look for; for the record, this magazine wrote about the cordect thing in 2001 (see "Selling To The Poor Profitably", Business Today, June 21, 2001), in an article that was, coincidentally, based on Prahalad's ideas on selling to the poor.

The entrance to EID Parry's sugar mill at Nellikuppam is adorned by an A7 W. Smith & Cold (Glasgow) sugar-crushing engine (near left) that was installed in 1941, crushed some 210 lakh tonnes of sugarcane, and retired in 1993

Of history, there's enough on display at Yorke Club, from a huge rosewood billiards table, to a wooden bar (it is a store for provisions now), to mouldering encyclopaedia and other books dating back to the 1800s and 1900s to high-ceilinged rooms with wooden rafters to furniture of the sort that can only be seen in stores dealing in antiques. "Those days, the resident British would send a peon to Pondicherry for fresh bread every day," says an employee.

Ironically, the man whose name the company has taken, did not live to see the mill. Thomas Parry, a British merchant adventurer, landed in India in 1788, when he was 20 years old. By the time he died-in Cuddalore, of cholera, in 1824, and his grave can be seen at the town's Christ Church-he had made three fortunes, lost two, and established himself as one of India's leading businessmen. Even his nephew David Pugh (the original distillery licence is in his name) was probably not responsible for much of what can be seen at the Nellikuppam factory today.

The sugar business and much of Parry & Company's other interests in the region were run from the company's offices in Old Cuddalore, where they were located in the East India Company's Factory House that dates back to the 17th century. Today, the building, which is still standing, houses the company's ledgers dating back to 1853.

There's a lot of history on display at Yorke Club (extreme left). This includes a huge rosewood billiards table (left), besides encyclopaedia and other 19th- and 20th-century books, and furniture of the sort stocked only in antique stores

In 1897, East India Distilleries and Sugar Factories Limited was incorporated in London; this acquired most of the assets of Parry & Company in the South Arcot district of Tamil Nadu where Cuddalore is located; in 1948, the company moved its seat of management to Madras (now Chennai); in 1955, it became Indian-owned; and in 1956, its name was changed to the current one, EID Parry. The Nellikuppam sugar factory ran into a trough of problems-labour unrest, deteriorating relationships with farmers, inability to make a go of the highly-regulated sugar business-before it was acquired by the Murugappa Group in 1981. The group embarked on a drive to increase efficiency and reduce workforce but realised, wisely, that the key to its success lay in winning over the farmers, many of whom still possess indigo-cultivation agreements their forefathers struck with Thomas Parry; M.M. Venkitachalam, a member of the Murugappa family and a qualified agriculturist, was deputed to win back the confidence of the farmers. "Today, we have some 25,000 farmers in Nellikuppam and this mill continues to crush the highest amount of cane in the state of Tamil Nadu, for the fourth year in a row," gushes P. RamaBabu, MD, EID Parry. This year, the mill will crush some 12-15 lakh tonnes of cane, and provide employment to some 7,000 people (the sugar division returned operating profits of more than Rs 34 crore on sales of Rs 415 crore in 2003-04). And to think it all began when Thomas Parry acquired two ailing indigo ventures in Cuddalore belonging to two British merchants, Colonel Cullen and Edward Campell, between 1807 and 1809.