Thirukkurungudi Vengaram Sundram Iyengar (22 March 1877 – 28 April 1955) was an Indian industrialist and automobile pioneer. He started his career as a pinewood dealer and later in 1911, he founded T. V. Sundram Iyengar & Sons, a bus company which later diversified into automobile production and emerged as the parent company of the TVS Group, one of India's biggest business conglomerates.[1] With his humble beginning as a lawyer, he grew into one of the most successful industrialists of his time. The flagship company of the group is TVS Motors established by his son T. S. Srinivasan. He laid foundation for road transport industry in the erstwhile Madras Presidency through the state's first bus service. The TVS group he thus started now extends from motor industry, auto services to financial services.
Birth and early life
T. V. Sundram Iyengar was born in a Iyengar Tamil Brahmin family[2] in early 1877 in Thirukkurungudi, in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Sundram Iyengar started his career as a lawyer. As per his father's wishes, he then moved to work for the Indian Railways and later in a bank.[3]