The Chetty History

A history of inventions & innovations.

50 years ago, Chetty Co., started from the backyard of a garage in Mumbai, India. The place may be small but ideas were not. This garage became abode to innovations and inventions, witnessing the birth of many cutting-edge products and mechanisms. From a garage to the largest stands & accessories manufacturers in India. Chetty Co., now caters to customers all around the world.

Humble beginnings

Shrinivas Chetty

An intuitive mind with a thirst to learn, he started his journey as a daily-waged worker in mills in Mumbai during the 1960s. His curiosity and observation led him to start opening up and repairing non-functional loom weaving & dyeing machines, leading him to learn a great deal about electronics & working on the machine, owing to his technical knowledge and leadership skills, he was later promoted as department head. In the quest to learn more about machines and electronics, he left all comfortable jobs, and worked in many other sectors like rubber, plastic, electronic appliances, pharmaceutical factories.

During the time when he was gaining knowledge of different sectors, he kept tinkering with ideas and designing products in the backyard garage as a hobby. He invented many products in the process. One of them was the first portable handheld electric tester. In the 1970s, into the heavy industrial machinery and electrical servicing business, taking up complete servicing contracts of major factories in and around Mumbai, becoming a pioneer and setting up a vast array of network in different sectors. With his expansive knowledge of engineering and product design, he led the way for our company and the family towards an inventive mind and design thinking. Most of our present designs take root from his ideas and ideologies.

"The key to designing good products is not just to look but to observe the details."

The manufacturing idea

Narayan Chetty

Inheriting all the traits from his father of intuitive engineering and observational mind, he grew up later to be a great product designer. Ever since his childhood, he used to accompany his father to factories as his assistant during the 1970s, where he was trained in practical engineering and observed products from inside out. Later, he also took over some parts of the machine servicing business. In the quest to learn more, he left to work in the middle-east for the major part of the 1980s, where he worked in retail, textile, plumbing, construction, electrical industries. etc. He returned to India with a dream and a determination to start his own factory and take the business in a new direction. He started a small industry in Mumbai with plastic injection moulding machines with a handful of people, where he also used to work on machines for 16-17 hours a day. Initially, he used to produce parts for electronics appliances companies and, later in the mid 1990s, got the opportunity to make some components for the lighting(photography) industry.

This was the turning point for him as he got the opportunity to venture into a new industry where his design skills could be used to their fullest potential and that is when our company ventured into manufacturing stands & tripods. During the last 30 years, he has pioneered and designed numerous lighting and multimedia accessories and designed unique products and mechanisms. The timeless design of the Snaplock System, which is used even today in most of our tripod was invented by him during the late 1990s. His designs and engineering feats pushed the envelope forward in the industry, taking our products worldwide. This made our company grow multi-fold in the last 30 years and expanded our manufacturing set up from a small cottage industry where we employed 2-3 people to a huge multi-story facility with around 100 people working together to manufacture stands and accessories. Making us the largest manufacturer of stands and accessories in India. His design contributions and innovative thoughts are engrained in each product produced at our company.

"Hard work and persistence is the quintessential for good design"

New Horizon

Hemant Chetty

Inheriting the design idea of generations and early exposure to production and engineering helped him to follow the path of the family and become a product designer. In his early 20s, he was learning music and playing in concerts and during a stage performance, he saw the stands being used in the music and pro audio industry and saw a massive void in the products. There were only singular stands with singular uses and the whole stage was disjointed with no harmony in them. He thought of making a single stand with multiple used to reduce weight, cost and space of a musician. Thus, the idea was born of multi-functional stands.

After years of designing and numerous patents, Chetty co. ventured into the music industry and the Pro-audio industry with a range of unique products which are renowned for being the most eco-friendly stands in the world were released in 2019. During pandemic times, he also designed and launched a range of portable sanitation products as it was the need of the time. His idea of minimal, compact and eco-friendly design is the next chapter and future of Chetty co.

"Minimalist, sustainable and long-lasting designs are the way to go forward. Less but better."

Timeline