Chapter 296 In full swing
Some say that the Dravidians belong to the Mediterranean race. As to when they migrated to India and what route they took, it is a complete mystery.
However, the four South Indian states, including the Tamils, believe that Indian civilization was created by the Dravidians.
The Aryans were foreign invaders who forcibly transformed the ancient traditional Indian culture.
Therefore, the people of Tamil State are generally hostile to the upper castes. They advocate their own Tamil language and oppose Hindi.
When the two major political parties were first established, their goal was to seize power in Tamil Nadu from the upper caste groups.
Both it and Uttar Pradesh seem to advocate the rule of lower castes, but in fact the core is just the opposite.
Yadav was able to sit on the chief minister's throne only because of the large caste.
However, in the process of governing Uttar Pradesh, the powerful influence of the upper castes is still needed.
Equal rights there remain only slogans, and the lower castes still live like animals.
The Tamils in the south are undergoing a bottom-up ideological transformation, and ordinary people do not think that Brahmins are sacred and inviolable.
At best, they are just powerful figures, and that is a reverence for power, not a reverence for divinity or class.
There is an essential difference between the two: power can be acquired through hard work, but divinity is insurmountable.
Therefore, Ron had never been touched on the feet in Tamil Nadu, at most he was greeted with the gesture of joining hands together.
Even the time I went to the countryside to visit the poor was the same.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this difference in perception that Tamil Nadu is very vibrant and has more educated people.
"Have you asked about that Ma Lan?" Ron started talking about business as soon as he got off the plane.
"Can't you just relax for two days?" Kavia's eyes turned.
"Okay, give her the injection first! The injection!" Ron knew she was hungry.
I don’t know why, but whenever she returns to Madras, Kavya becomes very strong.
Not only did he get promoted every time, he also often forced himself on women.
It looked as if she would complain to her aunt if Ron even slightly objected.
Well, after all, he was at his mother's house, so Ron gave in briefly.
However, he will stay in Madras for a while this time, probably until the end of September.
Sun TV’s branding issues needed to be resolved, and he also had to attend the wedding of his “grandmother’s” godson.
The most important thing is the construction of the Sur Electric Appliances branch factory and Ennoer Port, which also need to be inspected.
He has invested 10 billion rupees in these two projects, which is his largest investment to date.
The last time an agreement was signed here was in January, after which Ron arranged for the engineering team to move in, and the supervisory team was transferred directly from Mumbai.
The construction experience of the Sur Park can be directly applied to other branch factories without having to do everything personally.
Now, eight months have passed, and the construction site has changed a lot.
There are more than ten factory buildings, all equipped with water and electricity, and construction has already started.
The remaining office buildings and more factory buildings are under construction, but their progress is slower.
Ron's original goal was to prioritize the establishment of ten production lines to meet market demand in South India and some overseas countries.
Sur Electric's production capacity has been in short supply across India.
Therefore, the construction of branch factories has always taken production lines as the first goal.
Madras is closer to Dongda, so equipment and raw materials arrive at the port early.
The factory's infrastructure was in place and the production line was installed simultaneously.
It took more than half a year to reach its current scale, which is much faster than the original construction speed in Mumbai.
Today, the Madras factory produces 150,000 televisions of various models per month, 80% of which are consumed in South India and the rest are exported to Sri Lanka.
Yes, the first overseas market opened by Soul Electric was not the Persian Gulf countries, but Sri Lanka, which is only across the bay from Tamil Nadu.
The two places are so close that a trip by ship takes only three to five days. In some bays, one can even see each other's territory.
Sri Lanka has had close ties with India since ancient times, and the two countries have the same race, language and culture.
India is also Sri Lanka's largest trading partner, which mainly exports agricultural products and clothing internationally, while importing the rest mainly from India.
It was a natural thing for Sur Electric to sell the goods there, and the procedures were as simple as moving from one state to another.
Sri Lanka has a weak industrial base and average national income, and Sur TVs are even priced slightly cheaper there than in India.
After deducting various tariffs and costs, the profit from each TV set was only $30. The total profit from the initial 30,000 TV sets was $900,000.
But it was the US dollar after all. The trade settlement between the two countries was not in rupees, but in the US dollars that Ron was in short supply.
The market size of more than 20 million people makes it worthwhile for Suer Electric to continue to carry out such trade.
Since he had money, Ron also hired an international trade consultant for Sur Electric.
Sri Lanka's basic demand for television sets is about 5 million units. Although it imports from other countries, the gap is still huge.
Taking into account the replacement cycle and update needs, even after televisions become popular, there will be an annual import demand of 500,000 to 800,000.
India is naturally the main import destination, and Sur electrical appliances are the cheapest, so this part of the market can be easily captured.
There is no reason for him to miss out on a business worth tens of millions of dollars every year.
The production capacity of the Madras plant will continue to increase, and it will probably take twenty production lines to keep pace with market demand.
The employees are now crowded in a rented office building. Ron went to the site to cheer them up in person and promised that after the factory is completed, employee dormitories will be provided to solve the housing problems of many people.
Well, he was talking about the regular office staff, of course. The factory workers were all outsourced now, so he wasn't crazy enough to provide housing for thousands of people.
However, the Madras factory is indeed powerful. Not considering the initial investment costs, it made a profit of more than 300 million rupees in just one month of production.
This does not include the foreign exchange earned from Sri Lanka, so the employees should be given some benefits.
After visiting the factory, he went to inspect the Ennore Port Terminal, where the scene was completely different.
The blue sea and blue sky, huge engineering machinery rumbled into action, and several large gantry cranes were lined up along the coastline.
The port does not have complex buildings, but is entirely based on infrastructure, including roads, railways, docks, waterways, and warehouses.
Most of them have only started, and there will be no significant progress within two years.
This was Ron's first time doing port business and he didn't know anything about engineering construction.
Just watching the huge gantry crane place giant concrete piers into the sea, I felt shocked, satisfied and proud.
In terms of shipping infrastructure, his Ennore Port is actually better than Adani's Mundra Port.
The port of Madras is right next door, so it is completely within the radiation range and has relatively complete infrastructure.
Take the railway connecting to the dock for example. Ron only needs to build less than ten kilometers to connect to the main line.
It would take at least 60 kilometers to connect Mundra, a remote place, to other railways.
All of this requires huge financial support. It can be foreseen that Adani will invest much more money in the port than Ron.
Not to mention that he also had to attract business for the port, while Ron only had to wait for the traffic from Madras Port to be diverted.
It’s so convenient. His “mother” is really good to him.
Of course, since she owns one-tenth of the shares, her work is not in vain.
Ron had visited her a few days earlier in Madras, but she was busy preparing for her adopted son's wedding.
He took advantage of this opportunity to make an appointment with Ma Lan.
Kavya had already found out everything. As a local, she was no stranger to the Malan family.
Kalanithi Malan is a young man in his early thirties. He returned from studying in the United States in the late 1980s and inherited his family's small publishing company.
He was fascinated by television when he was abroad, but was unable to enter the industry due to the monopoly of the All India Television at that time.
Later, the publishing company was in trouble and economic controls were relaxed, so Ma Lan immediately entered the broadcasting industry.
At that time, Zee TV was already well-known, so he went to Chandra to discuss cooperation, hoping that the other party would reserve a time slot on the satellite transmitter for his channel.
As a result, Malan never met Chandra from beginning to end. Zee TV only sent a senior executive to send him away.
Later, Stava, who started out as a cable TV company, accepted Malan. His TV network needed different TV stations to enrich its content.
ATN could only broadcast for a few hours at the time, so there was nothing wrong with giving the spare time to Sun TV.
One focuses on Hindi and the other focuses on Tamil. There is no competition between them.
Stava required Malan to pay $1.5 million a year in lease fees, which was much cheaper than fully leasing a satellite's launch access.
However, 40 to 50 million rupees was still a sky-high price for Malan at that time.
He scraped together all his savings and borrowed some money from the bank to raise the $1.5 million.
The content of the TV station's early programs was drafted piece by piece by piece by twenty of his friends who brainstormed together.
In order to convince street shop owners to install cable TV in their stores, Ma Lan personally went to the streets to sell the products.
The results were remarkable. In just over a year, cable TV operators began to connect to their channels across Tamil Nadu.
All India Television speaks in Hindi and people who are used to Tamil don’t like to watch it at all.
Sun TV filled this gap as soon as it appeared, creating a complete blue ocean market.
After two years of development, Ma Lan is already considering changing the TV station's broadcast time to 24 hours.
Their content is becoming more and more abundant, and their audience is growing, which is enough to support this part of the market.
It was the high satellite leasing fee that made him hesitate: 200 million rupees, which was Sun TV's annual revenue.
The performance of Russia's satellite has also been a problem recently, and their TV stations have also been affected a bit.
Fortunately, Tamil Nadu is close enough to the equator that the signal fluctuates a bit, but it’s still there.
The North India region targeted by ATN suffered the most, with the signal being lost directly.
Just a month ago, when Malan was discussing the next steps with his internal team, Jayalalithaa called.
Someone had taken a fancy to the name "Sun TV" and was ready to negotiate a deal with them.
Now here comes Ron.
(End of this chapter)
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