How Ashoke Mukherjee brought high-fidelity sound to India with Sonodyne

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The 1970s were a turbulent era for industry in Bengal. Violent strikes and frequent bandhs drove many Kolkata-based companies to relocate.

In this challenging environment, a young engineer made a bold and seemingly foolhardy decision—to start an audio products business in 1970. Entrepreneurship in the city had all but dried up as left-wing politics gained ground. Yet, Ashoke Mukherjee, the son of an ICI (UK) employee, was determined to carve his own path.

Raised in an upper-middle-class family, he pursued his early education in Kanpur before earning a degree in electronics and communications from Roorkee University (now IIT Roorkee). Named Best Student of the Year, a lucrative job seemed the obvious next step. Read this | Jamnalal Bajaj and the alchemy of business philanthropy While most of his classmates opted for government jobs or higher studies abroad, Mukherjee chose a different route.

He joined GEC (UK) as an R&D engineer in the radio division, where he gained invaluable experience across departments, from tool rooms and paint shops to marketing. Most parents would have been content with such a career trajectory—but not Mukherjee’s father. Throughout his son's formative years, he offered a singular piece of advice: “Whatever you do, your objective should be to sign cheques for at least 100 people." His fascination with audio engineering had begun at Roorkee, where he spent hours in the lab, at the electronics hobby center, and buried in audio magazines.

The turning point came when someone brought him a Danish amplifier for repair. “I found it quite simple to make," he recalls. “Based on this, I developed the first Sonodyne amplifier, using locally available components from BEL