Associations' building

The Thiru Vi-Ka Industrial Estate in Guindy is over fifty years old and this building seems to be from the same era. One of the earliest Industrial Estates in the country, this was the first in Madras. With the emphasis on small-scale industries, this 400-acre piece of land has a large number of such small factories, typically turning out components to be used by larger factories elsewhere.

Not that there are only small units here. Some big names - Ennore Foundries, TVS Electronics, Alcatel-Lucent, among them - have a presence inside the 'Guindy Estate'. Even the Olympia Tech Park on its western edge is an attractive location for the large, new age industries. The overbearing majority of units at the Guindy Estate however are of the single-unit entrepreneur type, somehow managing to clear a profit and trying to keep pace with all those competitive manufacturing practices coming out of China.

Bringing those kind of entrepreneurs together are various associations and industry groupings. The biggest of them here happens to be the IEMA - the Industrial Estate Manufacturers' Association, which is why their name board is the most visible one at street level. Inspite of having a spanking new office at RV Towers, the IEMA continues to operate out of this building, jostling for space with all those other groupings of small scale industries. Looks like they'll run out of nameboard space soon!