She means business: A historic year at FKCCI

In 2027, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), also co-founded by GD Birla and currently the largest business organization in India, will celebrate its own centenary. Meanwhile, closer home, a similar but older body – the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) – quietly celebrated its 110th anniversary last week. This year’s festivities marked a watershed event; they were presided over by a woman – FKCCI’s first woman president, Uma Reddy.

The idea of a representative body to advocate for the interests of business is an old one – the Marseille Chambre de Commerce was established in France as early as 1599. Surprisingly, the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce (GCC), Britain’s oldest, only made its appearance in 1783, founded in the aftermath of American independence by panicked Glaswegian merchants whose prosperity, built on the trade in Virginia tobacco, was in jeopardy. One of the GCC’s top priorities was to fiercely oppose the East India Company’s trade monopoly with India.

India’s first tradesmen’s associations came up in its thriving port cities. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCCI) was the first, in September 1836; its counterpart in Madras opened for business a week later. It was the BCCI’s relentless lobbying that was largely responsible for the building of the country’s first railway (the Bombay-Thane line), and the passing of the Indian Post Office Act of 1854, which unified all regional postal systems into a centralized national network.

The Bengal Chamber of Commerce came next, in 1853, and Cochin got its own Chamber in 1857. The first of the four to have an Indian president was the BCCI, in 1959!

The country’s fifth Chamber, the first in a princely state, was established in Bangalore on May 8, 1916, by the visionary dewan of Mysore, Sir M Visvesvaraya, with the full support of Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV. The raison d’etre of the Mysore Chambers (in 1973, it was renamed FKCCI) wasn’t to represent Indian business interests against British ones, but to institute an advisory body that would help guide state policy towards building a robust industrial economy. Its first president was WC Rose, an Englishman who had previously served as the first manager of the (State) Bank of Mysore (estd 1913). After Rose stepped down in 1920, the Mysore Chambers has only had Indian presidents.

Today, FKCCI has nearly 5000 direct members, drawn from trade, manufacturing and service industries across a variety of sectors; and 140 trade associations, representing various specialist groups – the Electronic City Industries Association, for instance— apart from the Chambers of every district in Karnataka. Each member comes with their own unique challenges and needs – training programs, better connectivity, improved infrastructure, revision of minimum wages; all of them must be well-represented by FKCCI.

It’s a tall order, but president Uma Reddy is unfazed. An electrical engineer who went solo right after she graduated from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering in 1984, in an age when women entrepreneurs were almost unheard of, she has served on FKCCI’s managing committee for several years now, and understands the brief. Plus, her stint on the PM’s council for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) has given her keen insights into a sector she is particularly interested in supporting. “It is such an honour to lead an organization that Sir MV founded,” she says. “I will do whatever it takes to live up to it.”

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)