I am a master in India

Chapter 296 In full swing
Some say that the Dravidians belonged to the Mediterranean race, but when they migrated to India and what route they took remains a complete mystery.

However, the four southern Indian states, including the Tamils, all believe that Indian civilization was created by the Dravidians.

The Aryans were foreign invaders who forcibly transformed ancient Indian traditional culture.

Therefore, Tamil people generally harbor hostility towards higher castes, advocating their own Tamil language and opposing Hindi.

The two major political parties were founded with the aim of wresting power from the high-caste groups in Tamil Nadu.

Both it and Uttar Pradesh seem to advocate for low-caste governance, but their core principles are actually quite opposite.

Yadav was able to sit on the throne of chief minister only because of the size of his caste.

However, in governing Uttar Pradesh, the powerful influence of the high castes still needs to be relied upon.

Equality there remains only a slogan; the lower castes and lower classes still live like animals.

In the south, Tamil thought was transformed from the bottom up, and ordinary people did not feel that Brahmans were particularly sacred and inviolable.

At best, they are powerful and influential figures; that is reverence for power, not reverence for divinity or class.

There is a fundamental difference between the two: strength can be acquired through effort. Divinity, however, is insurmountable.

Therefore, Ron was never touched on the foot in Tamil; at most, he was greeted with a wai (hands together).

Even that time when I went to the countryside to visit the poor was the same.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this difference in perception that Tamil is so vibrant, with a higher proportion of educated people.

"Have you inquired about that Malan?" Ron asked, getting down to business as soon as he got off the plane.

"Can't you relax for a couple of days?" Kavia's eyes sparkled.

"Okay, let's get the shot first! Get the shot!" Ron knew she was hungry.

For some reason, Kavia becomes very assertive whenever she returns to Madras.

Not only did he always take the lead, but he also frequently forced himself on her.

She acted as if she would complain to her aunt if Ron showed the slightest refusal.

Sigh, since he was at his mother's house, Ron briefly backed down.

However, he will stay in Madras for a while this time, probably until the end of September.

He needs to resolve the brand issues of Sun TV, and he also needs to attend the wedding of his "grandmother's" godson.

Most importantly, the construction of the Suer Electric branch factory and Ennor Port also needs to be investigated.

He has already invested a billion rupees in these two projects, his biggest investment to date.

The last time an agreement was signed here was in January. After that, Ron arranged for an engineering team to be stationed here, while the supervisory team was brought in directly from Mumbai.

The construction experience of the Suer Industrial Park can be directly applied to other branch factories, so that you don't have to do everything yourself.

Now, eight months later, the construction site has changed dramatically.

There are more than ten factory buildings, and water and electricity are readily available. They have already started construction.

The remaining office buildings and more factories are under construction, but their progress is slower.

Ron's initial goal was to prioritize setting up ten production lines to meet market demand in South India and some overseas countries.

Suer Electric has been experiencing a shortage of production capacity throughout India.

Therefore, the construction of branch factories has always prioritized production lines.

Madras is closer to Dongda, and the equipment and raw materials arrived at the port much earlier.

The factory's infrastructure was almost in place, and the production lines began to be installed simultaneously.

It took more than half a year to reach its current scale, which is much faster than the construction speed of Mumbai at the time.

Today, the Madras factory produces 15 television sets of various models per month, 80% of which are consumed in South India, and the rest are exported to Sri Lanka.

Yes, the first overseas market that Suer Electric opened up was not the Persian Gulf countries, but Sri Lanka, which is separated from Tamil Nadu by only a bay.

The two places are extremely close, and shipping takes only three to five days. In some bays, their territories can even be seen from each other.

Sri Lanka has had close ties with India since ancient times, and the two share a common ethnicity, language, and culture.

India is also Sri Lanka's largest trading partner, with the latter mainly exporting agricultural products and clothing to the world, while importing the rest primarily from India.

It was only natural for Suer Electric to sell its goods there; the procedures were as simple as moving goods from one state to another.

Sri Lanka has a weak industrial base and a low national income; televisions there are even cheaper than in India.

After deducting various tariffs and costs, each television set only earned $30. The initial 30,000 television sets generated a total profit of $900,000.

But it is, after all, the US dollar. Trade settlements between the two countries are not made in rupees, but in dollars, which Ron is short of.

With a market size of over 20 million people, it is worthwhile for Suer Electric to continue to engage in such trade.

After acquiring the money, Ron also hired an international trade consultant for Suer Electric.

Sri Lanka's basic television set needs are approximately 500 million units. Although it imports from other countries, the shortage remains enormous.

Considering the replacement cycle and upgrade demand, even after televisions become widespread, there will still be an import demand of 50 to 80 units per year.

India was naturally the main import destination, and Suer Electric was the cheapest option, so this market segment could be easily captured. He had no reason to let go of a business worth tens of millions of dollars annually.

The Madras plant's production capacity still needs to ramp up; it will probably take about twenty production lines to meet market demand.

The employees are currently crammed into the rented office building. Ron went to the site to personally encourage them and promised that he would provide employee dormitories after the factory was completed to solve the housing problem for many people.

Yes, I'm referring to the full-time office staff, of course. The factory workers are all outsourced now; he's not crazy enough to want to provide housing for thousands of people.

However, the Madras factory is indeed impressive. Even without considering the initial investment costs, it made a profit of more than 300 million rupees in just one month of operation.

This doesn't even include the foreign exchange earned from Sri Lanka; the employees should be given a little something in return.

After visiting the factory, he went to inspect the Ennor Port docks, where the scene was completely different.

Against the backdrop of a clear blue sea and sky, massive engineering machinery rumbled into action, with several large gantry cranes lined up along the coastline.

The port doesn't have complex buildings; it's all infrastructure: roads, railways, docks, waterways, and warehouses.
Most of them only get started, and within two years, there won't be any significant progress.

Ron was also doing port business for the first time and didn't know anything about engineering construction.

Just watching the massive gantry crane lower giant concrete blocks into the sea fills me with awe, satisfaction, and pride.

In terms of shipping infrastructure, his port of Ennor is actually better than Adani's port of Mondra.

The port of Madras is right next door, and this area is completely within its reach, with relatively well-developed infrastructure.

Take the railway connecting the docks, for example. Ron only needs to build less than ten kilometers to connect it to the main line.

Mondrana is such a desolate place that it takes at least 60 kilometers to connect to other railways.

This all requires huge financial support, and it is foreseeable that Adani will invest much more money in the port than Ron.

Not to mention that he also had to attract business for the port, while Ron only needed to wait for the traffic to be diverted from Madras Port.

It's so convenient now; his "mother" has really treated him well.

Of course, she has a tenth share in this, so she didn't work for nothing.

Ron had visited Madras a few days earlier, but she was currently busy preparing for her adopted son's wedding.

Taking advantage of this free time, he planned to meet with Ma Lan.

Kavia had already found out, and as a local native, she was no stranger to the Maran family.

Caranetti Maran is young, only in his early thirties. He returned from studying in the United States in the late 1980s and inherited his family's small publishing company.

He was fascinated by television when he was abroad, but he was unable to enter the industry due to the monopoly of All India Television at the time.

Later, when the publishing company went downhill, economic controls were lifted, and Ma Lan immediately went into the broadcasting industry.

At that time, Zee TV was already quite well-known, so he went to Chandra to discuss a collaboration, hoping that the other party would reserve a time slot for his channel on their satellite transmitter.

As a result, Maran never got to see Chandra; Zee TV simply sent a senior executive to get rid of him.

Stava, who started with cable television, took in Maran, whose television network needed different stations to enrich its content.

At the time, ATN could only broadcast for a few hours, so giving up the spare time slots to Sun TV was perfectly acceptable.

One primarily uses Printed languages, while the other primarily uses Tamil; they are not competitors.

Stava is demanding that Maran pay $150 million annually in lease fees, which is much cheaper than leasing the launcher access of a satellite outright.

However, forty or fifty million rupees was still an astronomical sum for Maran at the time.

He scraped together all his savings and took out a loan from the bank to raise the $150 million.

The initial program content for the TV station was drafted piece by piece by twenty of his friends, brainstorming ideas from all sides.

To persuade shop owners to install cable TV, Maran personally went out on the street to promote it.

The results were remarkable; in just over a year, cable TV operators across Tamil Nadu began to access their channels.

All India Television (AIP) is spoken in Hindi, which is not popular with people who are used to Tamil.

Sun TV filled this gap as soon as it appeared, creating a completely blue ocean market.

After two years of development, Malan is already considering changing the television broadcast time to 24 hours.

Their content is becoming increasingly diverse, and their audience is growing, which is enough to support this part of the market.

The exorbitant satellite leasing fees made him hesitate; 2 million rupees, which was about the same as Sun TV's annual revenue.

The performance of Russia's satellites has also been problematic recently, and their television stations have been somewhat affected.

Fortunately, Tamil is close enough to the equator that the signal is a bit volatile, but still working.

The situation was even worse in northern India, where ATN was targeting, as signals were completely lost.

Just a month ago, when Maran was discussing next steps with his team, Jayalalita called.

Someone has taken a liking to the name "Sun TV" and is preparing to discuss a deal with them.

Now Ron has arrived.

(End of this chapter)