Bengaluru: Long before advertising jingles crowded television screens, one line from an Indian commercial etched itself into household memory: Jo biwi se kare pyaar, woh Prestige se kaise kare inkaar. The idea came from TT Jagannathan — the technocrat-entrepreneur who turned a modest cookware business into one of India’s most trusted brands. Jagannathan, chairman emeritus of the TTK Group, passed away in Oct last year in Bengaluru at age 77. On Sunday, he was posthumously conferred the Padma award.An IIT Madras engineer with a postgraduate degree from Cornell University, Jagannathan returned to India in the early 1970s to help revive his family’s struggling business. Still in his 20s, he took charge of TTK Prestige, reshaping its products and image. When faulty pressure cookers sparked safety fears in the late 1970s, he designed the gasket-release system — a safety valve that restored consumer confidence.Safety became central to Prestige’s positioning. A 1980s TV commercial, filmed by Prahlad Kakkar and written by Sadiqa Peerbhoy, linked a husband’s concern for his wife with kitchen safety, turning a functional appliance into a symbol of trust and modern living. Jagannathan later steered Prestige from near-bankruptcy to global expansion, launching Manttra in the US and acquiring UK-based Horwood Homewares. Today, Manttra is the top-selling Indian brand in US stores, with over 40% market share. Under his leadership, Prestige evolved into a diversified kitchen-solutions company spanning cookware, electrical appliances and home-care products.
