J.N. Marshall -a memoir

 

                                                          

The marshy piece of vacant land on Mala Road in Kota junction always gave me an impression of an abandoned plot, abdicated in hurry. Broken sheds, temporary structures and knee length grass haphazardly growing all over. During 1980s I was posted on Kota division of the then W.R. Upon inquiry, nobody could tell me clearly labor it. They would simply disclose what they knew rather were told by their elders " Oh! some ANGREJ had set up a factory of compressors..." and that was about all. Then one day i decided to explore myself, no not the marshy plot of land but the history of J.N. Marshall.

J.N. Marshall stands for Jahangir Nusserwanji Marshall. A Parsi. He founded the trading company in Ahmedabad in 1926, which later expanded into the multinational engineering and steam solutions group. The firm was later developed into its manufacturing and corporate form by his nephew, Darius Minocher Forbes.

 It was in 1946 Darius M Forbes joined his uncle J.N. Marshall and they began trading in various energy saving steam equipment as well as imported boilers.  A foreign exchange payment crisis struck India in 1957 and the Govt did not renew J.N. Marshall’s import license.  The only way forward was to manufacture. Hence, the first factory was set up in Kasarwadi, Pune and manufacturing began in 1959. The second unit was set up in Hyderabad in 1985 for manufacturing gauges. The third factory was set up in Pimpri near Pune in 1986 for the manufacturing of control instrumentation.

 Today the company by name Forbes Marshall provides innovative solutions to help business to improve their energy and process efficiency and be more environmentally responsible, their customers are spread over across India, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, South east Asia and Europe.

After the economy opened in 1991, they needed to compete with global companies to remain in business, manufacture products of world standards. In 1992 sales to Sri Lanka were made. In 1998 an office was opened in Sri Lanka.

Today they have two manufacturing units in UK and Singapore along with four in India. 8000 customers are catered to worldwide.

Could not get a photo of J.N. Marshall, photo with this article is that of Darius Forbes the nephew. He passed away on 11th August 2023 at the age of 97 years.