“There are no hard feelings, nothing emotional. The brand is only going to go global.” That was Mr R. Chellappan's response on how it felt to sell his UPS business, which he built from the scratch.

The business was sold today to Legrand of France for Rs 829 crore.

Twenty-six years ago, Mr Chellappan, an employee of Ashok Leyland, chucked his job to do what he grew to be “passionate about” – making uninterruptible power supply systems.

Those were the early days of computerisation and UPS systems were badly needed.

The first UPS machine that ‘Numeric Engineers' produced was literally hand-made by Mr Chellappan. “I can still do it – right from soldering to commissioning and servicing,” he says.

The hand-made machine, bought by Southern Explosives of Chennai, worked well for over 15 years, far outstripping the maker's own expectations.The first year's turnover was Rs 15 lakh.

An avid table tennis player and a keen traveller, Mr Chellappan soon found he could balance the demands of business with his hobbies. In course of time, Numeric Engineers morphed into Numeric Power Systems and its growth was in tandem with the IT and ITeS sectors.

Within a year from start, Numeric bagged orders from India Pistons and Tata Bearings. In 1986, HCL signed a deal with Numeric for the supply of UPS systems for its offices.

The company went public in 1996 and mobilised Rs 10 crore as equity capital. It closed the financial year 2010-11 with a turnover of Rs 535 crore – over 90 per cent of this came from its UPS business.

A former employee of the company recalls that Mr Chellappan has always been “very hands on in everything about his company – from finance to circuit design and also a good teacher as well.”

> rravikumar@thehindu.co.in

Published on February 10, 2012