K. Gopalkrishna, the unheralded Indian automobile entrepreneur

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April Fool and the 1965 classic Waqt, featured the elegant-looking Standard Herald. Sadly, its launch coincided with labour troubles at the plant and a decline in demand. By this time the founder had handed over the running of the company to his granddaughter’s husband, C.V.

Karthik Narayanan, a grandson of the legendary C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, the famous Indian lawyer, administrator and statesman. An engineer by profession, Karthik Narayanan was born in Kolkata in 1938 but moved to Tuticorin for his early education.

On being handed charge of the business, he tried to carve out a niche for the struggling car company. But he was pitted against the might of two dominant business houses. Hindustan Motors was a part of the Birla group, then the largest conglomerate in the country, while Premier Automobiles was a division of the Walchand Group.

A warped licence-permit system ensured that there was little scope for a small entrepreneur to compete against such titans. Narayanan believed that the company’s future lay in diesel-driven light commercial vehicles, a tough challenge since the company would first have to develop a new diesel engine. Under his leadership, Standard Motors did that, launching the Standard 20 and by the early 1980s the company’s diesel-based light commercial vehicle had notched up a sizeable presence in the Southern markets.

Further growth, however, was stymied by changes in regulations related to pollution, and Standard Motors found itself losing ground rapidly. Its final hurrah came in 1985 when it launched the ambitiously named Standard 2000, presumably as the car for the coming millennium. Powered by a 2,061 cc four-cylinder engine, and a four-speed manual transmission, it was pitched as a high-end