English Literature – Article ☆ – Meet the man with 27,500 daughters ☆ Compiled by – Mr Sunil Deshpande ☆

Mr Sunil Deshpande 

☆ Article ☆ Meet the man with 27,500 daughters ☆ Mr Sunil Deshpande ☆

Mr. KP Ramaswamy

(Meet the man with 27,500 daughters. That’s what they call him – Appa)

His real name? KP Ramaswamy. Owner of KPR Mills, Coimbatore. A textile baron by profession. A father figure by choice.

While corporate honchos talk about employee retention, cost-cutting, and bottom lines, this man is busy transforming lives.

How? By turning mill workers into graduates. By making education their steppingstone to a better life.

It all started with a simple request. A young girl at his mill once told him –

“Appa, I want to study. My parents pulled me out of school because of poverty, but I want to study further.”

That one sentence changed everything.

Instead of giving his workers just a paycheck, he decided to give them a future.

He set up a full-fledged education system – right inside the mill.

📌 Four-hour classes after an eight-hour shift.

📌 Classrooms, teachers, a principal, even a yoga course.

📌 All fully funded. No strings attached.

 And the result?

🚀 24,536 women have earned their 10th, 12th, UG, and PG degrees.

🚀 Many are now nurses, teachers, police officers.

🚀 20 gold medallists from Tamil Nadu Open University this year alone.

Now, you’d expect a businessman to worry about attrition. What if these women leave? What about workforce stability?

Here’s what KP Ramaswamy says –

“I don’t want to keep them in the mill and waste their potential. They are here because of poverty, not by choice. My job is to give them a future, not a cage.”

And that’s exactly what he does….

They leave. They build careers. And then? They send more girls from their villages to the mill. The cycle continues.

This isn’t just a CSR initiative. This is Human Resource Development in its truest sense.

 At a recent convocation, 350 women received their degrees. And KP Ramaswamy made an unusual request –

“If you or your friends can hire them, it will give other girls the hope to study further.”

Think about it. A man running a multi-crore empire isn’t asking for business. He’s asking for jobs – for his workers.

How often do we see this?

This story isn’t just about KPR Mills. It’s a lesson in leadership, in corporate ethics, in nation-building.

B-Schools should teach this.

HR professionals should study this.

And the world needs to know this.

A story worth spreading.

****

Compiled by –  Mr Sunil Deshpande 

Nasik Mo – 9657709640 Email : [email protected]