Isha Mehendiratta 🇮🇳 🐦

My grandfather, J.C. Mahindra, trained as an engineer at Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Mumbai, & the large part of his subsequent career was in the steel industry, including a stint working at Tata Steel. During World War II, he went on to serve as India’s first Iron & Steel Controller, building relationships across global mills. Those connections later helped him and his brother, K.C. Mahindra, build a trading business that evolved into manufacturing, bringing in Willys Jeeps and International Harvester tractors to India. Growing up, I would occasionally hear my father and uncle refer to J.C. as a “tinkerer”… someone who had even held a patent. But it was always vague, never quite part of the Group’s folklore. Perhaps that’s not surprising. For decades, we hadn’t systematically organised our archives and memorabilia. Yesterday was World Intellectual Property Day. Last week, Vaidehi Mayekar, Senior Manager at our company, who is helping organise the archives, sent me a mail in the context of the forthcoming World IP Day. While going through all the random boxes of files & memorabilia, she had come across a document about a patent filed by J.C. in 1918… and assumed I would already know. I didn’t. And when I learned it was in internal combustion engine technology, I was genuinely stunned. It may not have been a seminal or earth-shaking patent, but somehow, that part of his story had slipped through the cracks of family narratives. At the very least, it ought to have been a strong part of the institutional ‘memory’ of a Group that makes automobiles. Thank you Vaidehi , for giving me a renewed sense of pride & a fresh dose of motivation from my grandfather. I hope it also gives engineers across the group the motivation to continue a legacy of innovation. #MondayMotivation