Chennai: Sanmar group chairman N Sankar passed away here on Sunday afternoon. He was 77. His death was confirmed by the company.
Sankar was the chairman of the well reputed Sanmar Group, a billion dollar global conglomerate, a diversified multinational, with presence in India, the USA, Mexico and Egypt.
A role model for entrepreneurs and institution builders alike characterised by a unusual combination of business acumen and ethical conviction, upright, farsighted and innovative and open to new technologies.
A pioneer in PVC manufacture, he came up with some of the original choices for highly integrated manufacturing processes at various manufacturing facilities of Chemplast, the groupās flagship company for almost 55 years now.
Corporate governance was an article of faith with Sankar and his business Group echoed this philosophy in its vision statement ‘Combining Integrity with Excellence’.
Sankar was among the pioneers to separate ownership from the management and he empowered the management with a pool of talented professionals.
A third generation entrepreneur, Sankar carved a niche for himself as an out of the box entrepreneur. With his technical educational background in Chemical Engineering from AC Tech College of technology and a masters from Illinois Institute of technology, Chicago, he had also handson experience at plant level.
He was known as a People Centric leader, spending lot of time and money to recruit talented people and train and develop them. Passion for excellence and relentless pursuit of perfection had been the hall marks of his leadership.
Sankar joined Chemplast on the magic date 4/5/67 (1967) as a trainee, when his father KS Narayanan was the promoter and director. He was 26 years when he started his entrepreneurial career by acquiring a major stake in Industrial Chemicals and Monomers, a carbide manufacturing company.
He was well known for several successful joint ventures with world majors like Flowserve, Cabot, Crane, Emerson, Pentair, Tyco, AMP, BF Goodrich, Bayer, Elf Atochem etc.
At one time, under his chairmanship Sanmar had over thirty Joint Venture partners. Sankar had concern for the environment. He was a pioneer in establishing the Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) facility at all the Group manufacturing chemical plants, when the technology was not known in the Indian industry. Sankar had been a patron of sports ā Cricket and tennis. The Sanmar family runs two cricket clubs ā the Jolly Rovers, for over 50 years and the Alwarpet Cricket Club ā these clubs have produced outstanding players, a large number of them represented India.
Himself a university champion in tennis, he promoted the game by sponsoring tennis talent for over the last 40 years.
He stepped in at a crucial point in the life of Madras Musings, and placed it on a sound financial footing with support from multiple corporate houses.
Sankar had great concern for the public causes and he supported well known healthcare institutions including the Cancer Institute, Sankara Nethralaya, Childs Trust Hospital, Voluntary Health Services (VHS) and several others.
He was also involved in the management of a number of educational and charitable organisations including Sri Sankara Schools, Chennai Willingdon Corporate Foundation and Chennai Heritage and was a member on the Board of Governors of The Indian Institute of Management- Kozhikode.