THE CASE OF THRISSUR BUSINESSMEN

I used to say in many of my keynotes that you put all Thrissur businessmen on one said of the balance and all the businessmen from 13 other districts of Kerala on the other, the Thrissur side of the balance, will not  lift up. 

There is some thing more deeper here. 

The south side of Malabar coast ends in Kodungallur (Crangannur or Muziris) and traders (വർത്തകർ) from all over the world, particularly from Middle East used to visit it for more than two millennia. And business flourished in that town for long. 

When King Shaktan Thampuran wanted Thrissur to come up, seeing the shortage of businessmen there, he sent for those Nasrani [originals + converts (മാർഗം കൂടിയവർ)]from Kodungallur to come down to Thrissur to set up businesses and gave them many privileges. Thus the city started with a strong business ecosystem, set up by the migrants (വരുത്തർ) of international dimension and global connect. 

The financial institutions flourished there from the mid 19th century and all through the 20th century (Banks - Lord Krishna, South Indian, Dhanalaxmi, Catholic Syrian, now ESAF). The base of all these were the Chit fund companies that flourished there. Chitti is the contribution of Thrissur businessmen to Kerala. 

Working for HCL in the mid 80s, I must have visited not less than 100 Chitti (കുറി) companies in Thrissur round itself, of Limited company status, all headed by businessmen in their 60s & 70s. Even Kerala Govt. headquartered its Chit fund company (KSFE) in Thrissur. That is the hereditary advantage Thrissur had in financial sector. 

Lastly, in spite of big businesses that they held, the businessmen were very rooted to earth (humble, servant leadership). They will have the ഒറ്റമുണ്ട് (dhoti),  ജുബ്ബ (shirt but many times, topless) and the തോർത്ത് (Kerala towel) on the shoulders. Talk to this ഈനാശു (person),you wouldn’t realise that at home he could simply pick up 2 crores rupees from the കുടം, just like that. 

Simple living, god fearing, hardworking with deep business sense and clear focussed money-making ability of these personas gave Thrissur the status what it has today. 

Like the Marvari, Sindhi, Gujrati, Chettiar & Mangalori businessmen, Thrissur businessmen are a breed apart and what is more astounding is the fact that the distribution of the money is not with one community as we see in other places. Here whether Hindu (of all caste), Muslim or Christian, they are identified by the business first. 

While all of these are latently recognised, there aren’t much of written documentation of the Thrissur businessmen and their original ecosystem. Many fantastic business case study possibilities exist for Thrissur.