List of Prominent Kongu Vellala Gounder

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/coimbatore/kongu-region-a-business-hub-since-prehistoric-times/articleshow/37372534.cms

Kongu region a business hub since prehistoric times

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/gounder-consolidation-could-pose-headache-to-major-parties/articleshow/4557663.cms

Gounder Consolidation could pose headache to major parties

https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/advertorial/article30197292.ece

Epitome of enterprise

//Almost every region in Erode district has a cluster of business activity, which has flourished and has a niche in the market.

THE economic story of the Kongu region, Erode district in particular, is like a fast-paced action movie, where the goal of the characters is to succeed. The characters chose entrepreneurship as the way to meet this goal. A majority of entrepreneurs went in for textiles. But there were exceptions such as those who run SKM Egg Products Exports (India) Ltd., exporters of powdered egg; Sakthi Masala (P) Ltd., manufacturers of spices and masalas; URC Construction (P) Ltd.; and New Hope Food Industries Pvt. Ltd., the makers of Milka Wonder Cake. They have given a new identity to Erodes entrepreneurship.

The bulk of the textile industry, however, continues to remain anonymous. The absence of a brand is surprising, given that entrepreneurship in textiles is at least 30-40 years old, beginning with the introduction of the power-loom in the region. Until that time, the Sengunthars, a community of traditional weavers, were using handlooms. With their gradual exit from weaving, partly because of social mobility, the Kongu Vellalars, also called Gounders and basically farmers, entered the weaving trade.

Various reasons are given for this. One is poor returns from agriculture. The second, according to the historian and epigraphist Pulavar S. Raju, is that when a community moves away from its trade, the dominant community of a region moves into the space created. These reasons may have led the agrarian community to turn to weaving, but what sustains the entrepreneurship is strong community bonding, which is symptomatic of other communities in the region as well.

Professor R. Vaidyanathan of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, in his paper Caste as Social Capital says, The needed capital was raised within the Gounder community, a caste relegated to land-based activities relying on community and family networks. He adds, Those with capital in the Gounder community transfer it to others in the community through long-established in- formal credit institutions and rotating-savings and credit associations. These networks were viewed as more reliable in transmitting information and enforcing contracts than the banking and legal systems that offered weak protection of creditor rights.

C. Devarajan, managing director of the Rs.250-crore company URC Construction, says his father raised the money necessary to build the company by borrowing from fellow villagers. The same holds good for the SKM group of companies as well. Shree Shivkumar, managing director, SKM Egg Products, says his father, S.K. Maeilanan- dhan, raised the money needed for setting up a poultry feed unit by borrowing from his clients, who also happened to be from his community. Several such ventures, big and small, grew in places in and around Erode. An interesting feature of growth of such ventures is that the industries developed in a cluster and with very little government support.//