Page 68 - Gujar Mal Modi

cost of the oil used by them.

Levers was an international company doing business in several countries. It

could afford to sustain itself even after heavily undercutting the prices of their
toilet soaps and even after spending huge amounts of money on promotional

publicity. About 300 Indian concerns which were at the time engaged in the
manufacture of toilet soaps started closing down one after the other in the face

of heavy and unequal competition thus offered by the Levers, and only Tatas
and Levers were left in the market. Both these firms used to spend thousands of

rupees on promotional publicity of their products. After War, the Levers set up
a big toilet soap factory at Calcutta and, Tatas, too, established another factory

at Ghaziabad in order to push the sales of their products in Northern India and
make their soaps more competitive in comparison to Levers’ products. The Tatas

adopted one more technique in order to sustain themselves in the competition
with Levers. They would supply their bleaching powder only to those dealers

who agreed to place orders for their toilet products. Since the bleaching powder
had a better margin of profit, this inducement helped to push up the sales of

their toilet soaps.

Among the numerous toilet soap factories which closed down in the face of the

cut-throat competition from Levers were those established by Birlas, Thapars
and Lala Shri Ram. Modis, too, had to close down their toilet soap unit, but they

continued to manufacture washing soap.

The distillery set up by Mr. Modi was inaugurated by Mr. Manubhai Shah, the
theUiMinister for Industries, on 10th January 1960. While inaugurating the facto-

ry, Mr. Shah exhorted Mr. Modi to go in for the production of acetate yarn based
on chemicals and alcohol. Modis realised that man-made fibres had a bright fu-

ture and from that very day they started looking for a suitable scheme for the
manufacture of synthetic yarn. In 1960, the Government decided to establish

one Engineer ing College at Kanpur and a Board of Governors consisting of four
eminent persons was set up for running the same. Mr. Modi was appointed Gov-

ernor on the board representing public inter ests. In the same year a synthetic
Silk Yarn Development Council was set up by the Government and Mr. Modi was

ap pointed member of the Council for a period of three years. Again, a branch of
the National Productivity Council was set up at Meerut and Mr. Modi was elected

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