Venu Srinivasan (born 11 December 1952) is an Indian industrialist and the chairman emeritus of TVS Motor Company, one of the country’s three largest makers of motorcycles and scooters. A grandson of T. V. Sundaram Iyengar, who founded the TVS group in Madurai in 1911, he took charge of the family’s brake-making firm at twenty-six and led it and TVS Motor to win the Deming Prize, the Japanese award for quality management. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2020.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Venu Srinivasan |
| Born | 11 December 1952, Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
| Age | 73 |
| Occupation | Industrialist |
| Position | Chairman Emeritus, TVS Motor Company |
| Education | College of Engineering, Guindy (B.E.); Purdue University (M.S. Management) |
| Honours | Padma Shri (2010); Padma Bhushan (2020) |
| Spouse | Mallika Srinivasan |
| Children | 2 (Lakshmi Venu and Sudarshan Venu) |
Early Life
Srinivasan was born in Chennai into the TVS family, whose businesses, begun as a rural bus service, had grown into the largest group of automobile component makers in India. His father, T. S. Srinivasan, founded the companies that made brakes and mopeds. As a schoolboy Venu spent his holidays working as a mechanic in the group’s garages. He took an engineering degree at the College of Engineering, Guindy, and a master’s degree in management at Purdue University in the United States.
Career
Sundaram-Clayton
He became chief executive of Sundaram-Clayton, a maker of air brakes and aluminium castings, in 1979. In the late 1980s a long strike nearly ruined the company. He rebuilt its relations with its workers and, with advice from Japanese experts, introduced total quality management throughout its plants. In 1998 Sundaram-Clayton became the first Indian company to win the Deming Prize.
TVS Motor
The group’s moped company, which had made the TVS 50 a household name in southern India, formed a joint venture with Suzuki of Japan in 1982 to make motorcycles. The partnership ended in 2001, and TVS Motor had to develop its own engines and models. The TVS Victor motorcycle, designed in-house, was a success, followed by the Apache range and the Jupiter scooter. In 2002 TVS Motor became the first two-wheeler manufacturer in the world to win the Deming Prize.
Under him the company built plants at Hosur, Mysuru and in Himachal Pradesh and a factory in Indonesia, became one of India’s largest exporters of two-wheelers and three-wheelers, formed a partnership with BMW Motorrad to make small-capacity motorcycles and, in 2020, bought the British marque Norton. He handed the chairmanship to a professional in 2022 and became chairman emeritus; his son, Sudarshan Venu, is managing director.
Public Roles
He was president of the Confederation of Indian Industry in 2009–10 and has served on the central board of the Reserve Bank of India. He is a trustee and vice-chairman of the Tata Trusts, the charitable bodies that own a majority of Tata Sons, and sits on the Tata Sons board; in 2025 the trusts were in the news for disagreements among the trustees. The Republic of Korea has honoured him for promoting trade between the two countries.
Philanthropy
The Srinivasan Services Trust, which he set up in 1996, works in several thousand villages in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and other states on incomes, water, schools and health, on the principle that villagers should manage the projects themselves. He has also led the restoration of old temples in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring states, among them the great temple at Srirangam, whose board of trustees he chaired, a work recognised by UNESCO.
Personal Life
He is married to Mallika Srinivasan, chairman and managing director of the tractor maker TAFE and herself one of India’s leading industrialists. Their daughter, Lakshmi Venu, heads Sundaram-Clayton’s operations, and their son leads TVS Motor.
Featured image: Venu Srinivasan, chairman of TVS Motor Company, November 2011. Photo by Jishnuzz, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
