User:Ktin/sandbox/S. N. N. Sankaralinga Iyer

S. N. N. Sankaralinga Iyer was an Indian industrialist who was the founder of India Cements.

Biography
Iyer was from a tamil Brahmin family of moneylenders from Kallidaikurichi, a town in the Tirunelveli district of present day Tamil Nadu. He moved to organized banking by setting the Indo-Commercial Bank in 1932, in Mayavaram (now Mayiladuthurai) with funds from rich farmers in the region. Many years later, in 1961, the company would be merged with Punjab National Bank, an Indian public sector bank. Iyer also set up the Prudential Investment Trust in 1936. He partnered with his son K. S. Narayanan to venture into small scale manufacturing starting with the acquisition of a printing ink setup in Madras in 1939. He later acquired the South India Rubber Factory in 1940 and Industrial Chemicals Limited, a carbide manufacturing company, in 1943.

Iyer partnered with T. S. Narayanaswami, an agent at his Indo-Commercial Bank, to start India Cements. The company set up its first plant in Thalaiyuthu (now known as Sankarnagar) in 1939. The period coincided with the post-war boom in demand for construction, driving his investment in a limestone plant in Tirunelveli. During the sametime, Iyer and Narayanaswami set up Travancore Cements in Kottayam in the then princely state of Travancore with C. P. Ramaswami Iyer and the state holding 32 percent of equity in the company. Travancore cements later ran into financial problems and was taken over by the Kerala government.

Iyer's son K. S. Narayanan expanded the group's interest to chemicals by setting up Chemplast in partnership with B. F. Goodrich of the United States. The company diversified to become the Sanmar Group, an Indian conglomerate with interests from chemicals to shipping.