TT Jagannathan. File | Picture Credit score: GRN Somashekar
TT Jagannathan, chairman emeritus of TTK Status, handed away in Bengaluru on Friday (October 10, 2025). He was 77.
“His sudden and surprising passing away will likely be an irreparable loss to the Firm, and all of the Administrators and workers of the Firm convey deep sorrow and condolences to his household,” TTK Status, the kitchen and residential merchandise firm and the flagship of the TTK Group, mentioned in a inventory trade submitting.
Mr. Jagannathan, the grandson of former Union Finance Minister TT Krishnamachari, was a gold medalist from IIT Madras and held a PhD in operations analysis from Cornell College, USA. The enterprise was based by Krishnamachari.
In 1972, his father TT Narasimhan visited Cornell and urged Mr. Jagannathan to return dwelling and save the enterprise, “because it was collapsing.”
Remodeling the model
Mr. Jagannathan was a promoter-director of the corporate and had been on the helm of TTK Status Ltd. since 1975. He led the corporate to turn out to be a market chief within the small home equipment business within the nation, in keeping with the corporate’s annual report for 2025.
He was instrumental in reworking the corporate to achieve a market cap of over one billion {dollars}. He made excellent contributions not solely within the profitable administration of affairs of the corporate but in addition in offering crucial technical inputs for the event of novel merchandise, analysis and growth, and software of know-how by the corporate, it mentioned.
lengthy legacy
Mr. Jagannathan joined the Board of TTK Status as managing director in 1975 and served in that function for over 26 years till 2000. He then served as govt chairman for 19 years till 2019. Though he stepped down from govt tasks in 2019, he continued as non-executive director/chairman. He stepped down as chairman with impact from March 25, 2025. He was the longest-serving director/chairman within the firm’s historical past.
He authored the guide ‘Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Status turned a billion greenback firm’, which chronicles the corporate’s many milestones and the way it had fought chapter to turn out to be a profitable company.
Mr. Jagannathan was instrumental in turning across the TTK Group and making it debt-free, which he described as being achieved by means of “an enormous dose of widespread sense.”
His main invention, the gasket launch system, which he by no means patented, put an finish to the spate of bursting stress cookers and likewise saved the corporate from the brink of collapse.
Love for cooking
Mr. Jagannathan beloved cooking, which he realized on the age of eight.
“It was whereas cooking that I found the issue factors within the kitchen, and that helped me innovate. I’ve made certain that each one my executives and managers additionally know cook dinner,” he had mentioned through the launch of the guide.
“If you do not know cook dinner, then you aren’t within the cooking enterprise,” he typically mentioned.
Printed – October 10, 2025 03:18 pm IST