T.

S KalyanaramanIdeologies and
principles of fair business practicesPublished On: Friday,
February 27, 2015Views 4764

About
T. S. Kalyanaraman is the chairman of Kalyan Group along with Founder
Chairman & Managing Director of Kalyan Jewellers. Kalyan Group is the
holding company of Kalyan Jewellers. According to the latest report of
Forbes; his net worth is valued at roughly USD 1.1 billion and is ranked
#87th richest person in India.
T. S. Kalyanaraman son of Seetharamaiyer was born in 1951 in the Thrissur
City in Kerala and completed his education in the field of commerce from
Sree Kerala Varma College.
Married to Ramadevi who is a house wife; his immediate family consists of
three children & 5 grandchildren i.e. two sons, one daughter, two grandsons
and three granddaughters. His eldest son Rajesh Kalyanaraman who is
married to Maya Rajesh takes care of the inventory and finance departments
whereas Ramesh Kalyanaraman who is married to Deepa Ramesh leads the
marketing and operations departments. His daughter Radhika is a house wife

and his son-in-law, Karthik R is the Managing Director of Kalyan Developers,

their latest venture.

Early Life
As a family; their grandfather, T. S. Kalyanaramaiyer was the first person to
take the initiative of moving from priesthood to become a businessman.
Coming from such a family who has been in the field of business for the past
110 years has helped him gain immense and core understanding of the
functionalities and ideologies of business.
He began his entrepreneurial journey at an early of 12! Being the eldest son,
after the lessons and games were completed Kalyanaramans father used to
regularly take him to their textile shop to watch and understand the
business. He would also delegate him petite tasks which he would enjoy
doing, such as counting cash or taking stock; to teach him the functioning
and also to get him acquainted to the environment.
Their father often used to tell them that the customer is the king and without
them we are nobody, thus teaching them how to behave with the customers.
All the children of Seetharamaiyer grew up carefully listening & instilling
even the smallest piece of his advices. He used to say, Lesser margin and
more turnovers would give more profit. His farsightedness was so much
that, what corporates now preach and follow was taught to them in those
days. This helped him learn the basics at a very early age, eventually making
him the master of the game, at large.

Kalyan Group
Kalyan group collectively has holdings in three companies i.e. Kalyan Silks
(Kalyan Silks, Kalyan Sarees and Kalyan Collections), Kalyan Jewellers and
most recently Kalyan Developers.
The group was started in the year 1909 by T. S. Kalyanaramaiyer, a priest
and got its name from its founder himself. Presently, its headquarters is
located in Thrissur city of Kerala. It initially started-off as a textile mill which
was later taken by Government of Kerala, after which he moved to
Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu and started a textile shop in Thrissur city.
Later his son Seetharamaiyer joined the business and once their sons were
ready, partitioned the businesses to five sons in 1991. The key people in the

group are T. S. Kalyanaraman who chairs & manages Kalyan Jewellers and T.
S. Pattabhiraman who chairs & manages Kalyan Silks.
Recently, the group has also diversified into the real estate development
industry in the name of Kalyan Developers and also may soon step into the
field of 7-star schooling with future plans of entering the entertainment
sector through a chain of multiplexes as well.

1. Kalyan Silks : The textile shop started by T. S. Kalyanaramaiyer flourished on to become a

leading worldwide brand in the form of Kalyan Silks, Kalyan Sarees and
Kalyan Collections.
Kalyan Silks, the worlds largest silk saree showroom network continues to be
the most trusted brand in Kerala for more than a century now. As of date,
Kalyan Silks, domestically has presence in Kochi, Thrissur, Palakkad,
Kozhikode, Kannur and Kottayam, Thiruvalla, Bangalore along with worldclass showrooms present internationally in Dubai and Sharjah.
With aims to make a presence worldwide; in the near future the brand will be
expanding to locations like Thiruvananthapuram, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and
Singapore as well.

2. Kalyan Jewellers : With 7500 employees, Kalyan Jewellers is the largest Jewellery chain in India.
Being a part of the group, it also is headquartered in Thrissur city of Kerala.
Kalyan Group is the holding company of Kalyan Jewellers but is chaired and
managed by T. S. Kalyanaraman.
Kalyan Jewellers was started in the year 1993 with an investment of INR 7.5
million (INR 75 lakhs) in Thrissur itself. After the recent fund raiser from
Warburg; Kalyan Jewellers is currently being valued at about $ 2 billion.
With a massive advertising and marketing budget of around INR 900 million
($14 million); Kalyan Jewellers is one of the few brands in the industry which
holds some of the most reputed names as their brand ambassadors such as
Amitabh Bachchan, Manju Warrier, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Nagarjuna
Akkineni, Prabhu Ganesan and Shivaraj Kumar. And according to media
reports, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan alone charges INR 10 crores ($1.6 million)
per year for a two year deal with Kalyan.

Since inception; Kalyan Jewellers has been widely known for its honesty,
quality, fair play & trustworthiness and has taken some of the bravest
initiatives to prove the same as well. Below mentioned are some of the key
initiatives taken by them:

They were the pioneers to sell only BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards)
hallmarked Jewellery, to dissect cheating and malpractice in gold quality and
pricing. And have also installed state-of-the-art carat meters to test the
purity.

Later, Kalyan Jewellers decided to reward their loyal customers by

introducing a loyalty programme the Kalyan Gold Card. This was for the
customers which were not limited to just schemes and gifts offered
seasonally.

Next, Kalyan Jewellers was the first retail company to put rate tags on
its products and selling Jewellery at fixed real prices. To add to that; they
went to the extent of publishing the average price of basic categories of
ornaments to prove their affordability and legitimacy.

After that, Kalyan Jewellers opened 101 customer service centres

called My Kalyan throughout Kerala to provide services like Jewellery
purchase advance schemes, gold insurance, wedding purchase planning,
advance booking of purchases to protect against price increase, sales of gift
vouchers, gold buying tips, education, etc. Gradually they will also be
expanding nationwide.

And recently, Kalyan Jewellers announced that diamond which was

once meant for the classes, shall now be made available for the masses as
well. They will be launching an affordable range of diamonds starting at the
price of INR 8000/-. To promote it largely using their marketing of INR 200
crores for FY2015-16; their brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan will be
seen in their two-film campaign which has an end tagline of, Heera hai sab
ke liye, Hindi for A diamond is for everyone.

3. Kalyan Developers: Lastly, Kalyan Developers is the latest venture of Kalyan Group and has
entered the industry with an aim to make it transparent and to remove the
stains of delays, disappointment and distrust.
Although there is not much to talk about it as of now but the first residential
project of Kalyan Developers which has recently been completed is at

Thrissur called Kalyan Helioce. Other than that; they also have upcoming and
ongoing projects in other cities such as Calicut, Trivandrum, Kochi,
Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore. The services they offer include Kalyan
Properties, Kalyan Interior & Kalyan Assist.

Entrepreneurial Journey
The Kalyanaraman family, belong to migrants from Tanjavur district of Tamil
Nadu who are successors of individuals who came from a religious
backgrounds that comprised of priests, saints and advisors to kings.
With a belief that business was necessary to create job opportunities and to
make India self dependent; the decision to start a business was taken by a
Dewan to the Maharaja of Kochi, who was one of the senior relatives of the
family.
Following their ideologies and principles of fair business practices with a
social objective and not just for selfish motives, Kalyan Group was initiated in
the year 1909 by T. S. Kalyanaramaiyer which is now succeeded by his
grandson T. S. Kalyanaraman.
After completing his B.Com, in 1972 Kalyanaraman for the first time was
asked to take charge of Kalyan Textiles, which then had a stock capacity of
around INR 15 lakhs and a turnover of around INR 25 lakhs.
He used simple strategies like increasing the stocks to satisfy every
customer of theirs and appointing more people so that every customer got
individual attention. He also instructed his staff to behave cordially with all
customers; thus making sure they have a pleasant experience.
Using his mind and strategies; in the first year itself, he pumped up the
turnover to INR 30 lakhs.
Under this organized model set by Kalyanaraman, from here onwards; every
year their turnover began increasing by multiple folds. Most of the profit they
earned, they invested it on buying new stock.
By 1991, their turnover began touching INR 1.5 crores. This is when
Seetharamaiyer, their father decided to partition the businesses among the
five sons for unknown reasons.
Now during that time; their customers often asked them to start a Jewellery
shop, so that they could buy saris and Jewellery from the same place.

Motivated & inspired by their customers needs, in 1993 Kalyanaraman

decided to start his own Jewellery shop by the name of Kalyan Jewellers.
The total investment he made was INR 75 lakhs out of which INR 50 lakhs
came from his own pocket and the rest INR 25 lakhs was loaned from a bank.
Going against the trend he opened a rather huge store with an area of 4000
sq. ft which was fully air-conditioned with ample sitting capacity, clean toilets
and enough space for car parking; similar to that was seen in abroad. Thus,
making them the largest Jewellery showroom in South India!
They offered all kinds of models and designs in customized formats, which
the buyer could collect in roughly a months time. Within the first year itself,
they made a turnover of around INR 50-60 crores.
Soon, buyers from the nearby towns like Palakkad, Kozhikode, Kochi, etc. also
started coming to their showroom. Looking at this huge response; they also
introduced silver, diamonds and traditional Jewellery as well.
In the midst of 1995 to 2000; both his sons Rajesh Kalyanaraman & Ramesh
Kalyanaraman joined the business, fulltime. This came as a blessing-indisguise for him!
He quickly made his eldest son the in-charge of purchasing & finance and the
youngest son the in-charge of sales and marketing, while he did the overall
supervision. With their help; Kalyanaraman was successfully able to organize,
modernize & expand the business massively.
And within just 12 years or by March 2012, they increased to 31 showrooms
in total; with 8 being in Kerala, 14 in Tamil Nadu, 4 in Karnataka, 4 in Andhra
Pradesh and 1 in Pondicherry. To top that, they now had about 4000
employees.
With 31 showrooms functioning live and 19 more on its way; it took a lot of
time to travel from one to another to check quality, supervise the purchase
and also go through the designs and meet the customers.
Hence, they decided to buy a INR 30 crore, seven-seater Phenom 100
executive Embraer jet which was followed by a fleet of Embraer Phenoms
and a Bell 427 choppers along with their latest purchase of a new 13-seater
customized Embraer Legacy 650 aircraft.
Other than that; in October 2014 it was disclosed that Warburg Pincus,
American private equity firm had picked up a minority stake in Kalyan

Jewellers. The firm invested about INR 1,200 crores in Kalyan Jewellers which
got them a stake of around 10 to 12%.
After the investment; Kalyan Jewellers is being valued at roughly $ 2 Billion
(INR 13,000 crores). They plan to use the investment to add 28 showrooms,
including 12 overseas in countries like the UAE, Kuwait, Singapore and
Malaysia, to its existing 61 stores.
And presently; Kalyan Jewellers is expected to close the year 2014-15 with
revenues of INR 10,000 crores and in the next three years the company is
looking to pump up their revenues to INR 25,000 crores.

End Note
Under the leadership of T. S. Kalyanaraman; Kalyan Group has become one
of the very few family businesses which has managed to change their
strategies with the course of time and has successfully adopted the much
required corporate structure, to be able to cross the barriers of limitations.
And as a whole certain key points such as setting up own manufacturing
facilities to ensure quality control and to offer unique designs, treating
employees like family & paying above-market wages and most importantly
having direct customer interaction to as much extent as possible which
Kalyanaraman has been following religiously; have brought about a huge
difference in cutting the competition and succeeding as well!
TRIVIA: Narayan Gowda, who works with the Karnataka Public Works
Department had purchased a pair of bangles and to his surprise, a week
later he had received a call from T. S. Kalyanaraman himself, enquiring about
his entire buying experience.
These degrees of attention to detail are the reasons why Kalyan Group has
tasted big success.