How Usha Silai Machine Came to Dominate Indian Market

Nutan Manmohan

Anyone fond of collecting old newsprint as memorabilia would remember the advertisement that had a beaming mother-daughter pair sitting across a sewing machine. Bold letters on the ad read, “Train her to be an ideal housewife – buy her an USHA sewing machine.”

If machines are empowering tools, then the USHA sewing machine was considered an ultimate enabler for women of the 1950s and one of the most popular parts of wedding trousseau. The story of the USHA Sewing machine began in 1935 with Bishan Das Basil, a pioneer in the Indian engineering industry.

He studied beyond matriculation, got a scholarship, and joined the Roorkee College of Engineering in 1901, where he got another scholarship for specialised training in the UK. On his return to India in 1906, Basil joined the Post and Telegraph Department in Calcutta. Due to his ‘exceptional’ talent, he soon became superintendent of a workshop attached to the central telegraph office.

Research and experimental cell so consumed him that he would sit devising various equipment to be used in telegraph and telephone systems. These endeavours made him realise how India was acutely dependent on foreign countries for the most elementary tools. And he wanted to correct this glaring disparity.

Towards this end, he helped his friend B.K. Rohatgi acquire a patent for manufacturing electric fans, which were not made in India at the time. Thus, the foundation of India Electric Works was laid in 1923 and electric fans were manufactured in India for the first time.

First USHA machine prototype

As his retirement came close, Basil decided to jump into entrepreneurship. Import statistics told him that 60,000 pieces of sewing machines were imported in 1934 and this figure would surely increase. He turned a room in his staff quarters in Calcutta into a workshop and began to study the German Pfaff sewing machine as a prototype to create an indigenous sewing machine.

Such was the state of India’s manufacturing industry at the time that to even copy and recreate a prototype there were no tools for milling, drilling, lathe, press or capstan. For all these reasons, it took Basil one full year to recreate an Indian sewing machine mockup.

For the next two years, Basil continued to sink savings into finetuning this prototype. It was crude, shabby and unattractive but this machine could stitch if handled carefully. After that, Basil spent a large sum of Rs. 25,000 on 75 employees, who were fitters, turners, millers and foundry workers, to make 25 cast parts such as screws, pins, washers and springs.

25 sewing machines were completed by the end of 1936 and Basil named the brand after his youngest daughter, Usha. USHA’s sales team carried a machine from door to door for demonstrations. It made a strong appeal of ‘patriotism and the swadeshi movement’.

But his machines were not selling: its paint was uneven, the sewing pace was slow, the base and stand did not fit and the alignment of the machine wheel and stand was not accurate, which caused frequent jams. By this time, Basil had a loan of Rs. 92,000. There were just not enough good tools, and resources to make improvements or redo systems. The project was faced with a dead end.

DCM Mills meets Jay Engineering Works

At this point, one of Basil’s suppliers introduced him to Lala Shri Ram of DCM mills, who was impressed by Basil’s courage and tenacity. A sewing machine is a precision item involving the manufacture of 220 components.

On 2 March 1938, JEW’s board was dissolved and a fresh board of a new public limited company was formed, comprising Lala Shri Ram, his trusted managers Hans Raj Gupta and M.G Bhagat, along with three more eminent industrialists – Padampat Singhania, KL Poddar and Karamchand Thapar.

The renowned industrialists agreed to be a part of this ‘mission’ to creating a ‘swadeshi’ industry. A 31-bigha land was purchased at Prince Anwar Shah Road in Kolkata. The company secured new loans and a fresh infusion of share capital. Ms. Karam Ali Contractors were assigned to construct the factory building.

Lala Shri Ram began to make monthly visits to Calcutta to crack the production bottlenecks and to sort sales teams, commission agents, showrooms, demo units, marketing plans, and teams.

War demand, bumper profit

Despite this all-out effort to streamline the production and sale, the company closed its books in 1939 with a loss of Rs. 38,000. The spectre of World War II raised its head with the Japanese declaration of hostilities.

With the implicit threat of air raids and bombings on Calcutta, general panic ensued and a large number of factory workers left for t