Thursday, July 2, 2009

THE BPL FACTORY

The story of Bangalore during my times would be incomplete if i dont write something about this company called BPL which flourished in bangalore during 1980 to 2000. BPL originally stands for British Physical Laborotaries which was a company in UK a independent division of which was started by TPG Nambiar in Palakkad in Kerala and opened units in Bangalore city. The company had its inception in 1962.


BPL was a very big brand all over India mainly dominating the manufacture of colour televisions.At its height the turnover of the company was 2000 crores of indian rupees. BPL had several white coloured buses that used to ply around the city to bring employees to the plants. There were BPL plants everywhere in Bangalore at that time. To name a few places at avalahalli on old madras road, arakere on banerghatta road, and at several points on hosur road. BPL was a factory mainly in the electronics business abd I being an electrical engineer life was not very amusing for me within the plants. The head office of the company was located on church street and MG Road. The company enjoyed huge pomp and glory. I think roughly 5000 people worked at the plants.

BPL had a unorthodox management culture. However the company was very successful. The company enjoyed success for a limited time in the mobile telephony business too.

Several years of ill treatment of employees made it easy it seems for rivals to incite the employees into a strike in 1997 jeopardising beyond recovery the overall fortunes of the company in 1997. The mobile telephony business also went into dis-array later