Mr. P J Kuruvilla, ex- Financial Controller, Telco wrote in

I joined Telco as an Accounts Officer in 1947. Apart from looking after the accounts of the Company, my responsibility was settling with the Railway Board the prices of products manufactured against their orders, which were to be based on an agreement with them.

In 1954 Telco entered into collaboration with Daimler Benz for manufacture of commercial vehicles in India. I can vividly remember the 3500th truck assembled by us and the excitement which was generated on that achievement. The decorated truck was driven around the streets of Jamshedpur with a big board that read “3500th vehicle, thousands will follow”.

When we started moving our TMB trucks to Dealers outside Bihar for sale we had settled with the Government of Bihar a procedure where our drivers would take the vehicles up to the state borders and hand over the vehicle to the Dealer’s drivers and obtain a receipt from them duly witnessed by the officer of that state, which saved us from a demand for sales tax by the Bihar Government. However, the Bihar Sales Tax officers felt that the procedure was not being followed and slapped a sum of Rs. 3 lakhs as arrears sales tax. This was a mighty sum in those days. With the help of Mr. Tobaccowala, then Company Secretary, we filed a case against the Bihar Government and Mr. Palkhiwala argued the case. The judgment was in our favour as the court said the sales tax could be claimed only by the state in which the vehicle was being used. The Central Sales tax was introduced only later on and then we arranged to have godowns in different states, where we kept our vehicles and the dealers purchased the vehicles from us.

We had over 50 Germans working with us in the early days of auto production. Hans Stoehr , after his daily round in the plant would meet me and tell me what he expected of Accounts and advised me to ensure that the vendors supplied quality products and that their dues were paid on time .

I have several fond memories of my stay in Telco and my links with the Tatas remain as my son, Amrit, is still with Tata International. Though I’ve long since retired, I feel tremendously happy to see Tata Motors grow and prosper. My best wishes to all of you on the Golden Jubilee of auto production.