K.P. Ramasamy and Family

KPR Mill employs over 31,000 people, mostly women. The business and the social impact were built together, not separately.

K.P. Ramasamy built KPR Mill from a small power-loom unit in Coimbatore into a vertically integrated textile and garment company with revenues of Rs 6,462 crore, manufacturing yarn, knitted fabrics, garments, sugar and ethanol, and generating its own renewable energy. The integration across these categories reflects the structure of Coimbatore's industrial economy, where textile mills, agricultural processing and power generation have historically been developed together and where the relationships between them create efficiencies that standalone businesses cannot capture.

The company employs over 31,000 people, the majority of them women, and has built residential accommodation, healthcare and educational facilities on its manufacturing campuses to support this workforce. The consumer brand FASO, focused on knitted sportswear and casual clothing, is an attempt to capture retail margin from products that KPR has the manufacturing capability to produce at scale. The next generation, including Anandakrishnan, Selvakumar and Senthilkumar Ramasamy, are leading the push into consumer-facing retail, a different business from garment manufacturing with different skills and capital requirements.