RESTORE | REFLECT | REIMAGINE The Beginning of Godrej’s Aerospace Story 2015 - 2016 Volume 3, Issue 1 The story of India’s venture into space itself is an inspiring one, but for now, suffice it to say the US-Soviet space Race during the Cold War pushed others to think about space travel. With the successful launch of the Sputnik in 1957, the Space Age began. In India, Vikram Sarabhai’s vision culmi- nated in the formation of ISRO in 1969. Dr. Kalam was born in Dha- nushkodi, Tamil Nadu in 1931, when a 33-year-old Godrej Group had expanded from locks to soaps, storage and security solutions. By the sev- enties, after narrowly missing his dream of being an airforce pilot, Dr. Kalam chose scientific research. Meanwhile, the Process Equipment Division was set up in 1976. It was P. Surendranath of Tool Room and G. K. Datar of PED who had the idea of venturing into space equip- ment. They had encourage- ment from Mr Naval Godrej. At first, talks had taken place with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), but the plans had fallen through. Now ISRO had given them the order, and G&B took the order with MTAR, Hyderabad. In his interview, Mr N P Mani, a PCS (now Aerospace) vet- eran, recalled how difficult it was to transition from thinking in feet to thinking in microns! This was a very different kind of assignment. When the first lot was not a success, a de- jected Mr Mani went to Mr Naval Godrej asking if they had messed up. Mr Godrej said they were far from it, and that this was only the begin- ning. In 1987, a visit from ISRO’s Prof U R Rao sealed thee deal between G&B and ISRO - a liaison that continues till today. Harini Alladi Dr. Kalam in Vikhroli, 1990s Mr. Naval Godrej’s invitation to Prof. U R Rao of ISRO Soon after India bid a reluctant adieu to Dr. Kalam, we found a few photos in our collection of his visit to Vikhroli in the 90s. On looking further, we found ourselves delving into Godrej’s foray into aerospace.
Transcript
GODREJ ARCHIVES RESTORE | REFLECT | REIMAGINE
The Beginning of Godrej’s Aerospace Story
2015 - 2016 Volume 3, Issue 1
The story of India’s venture into space itself is an inspiring one, but for now, suffice it to say the US-Soviet space Race during the Cold War pushed others to think about space travel. With the successful launch of the Sputnik in 1957, the Space Age began. In India, Vikram Sarabhai’s vision culmi-nated in the formation of ISRO in 1969. Dr. Kalam was born in Dha-nushkodi, Tamil Nadu in 1931, when a 33-year-old Godrej Group had expanded from locks to soaps, storage and security solutions. By the sev-enties, after narrowly missing his dream of being an airforce pilot, Dr. Kalam chose scientific research. Meanwhile, the Process Equipment Division was set up in 1976. It was P. Surendranath of Tool Room and G. K. Datar of PED who had the idea of venturing into space equip-ment. They had encourage-ment from Mr Naval Godrej.
At first, talks had taken place with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), but the plans had fallen through. Now ISRO had given them the order, and G&B took the order with MTAR, Hyderabad. In his interview, Mr N P Mani, a PCS (now Aerospace) vet-eran, recalled how difficult it was to transition from thinking in feet to thinking in microns! This was a very different kind of assignment. When the first lot was not a success, a de-jected Mr Mani went to Mr Naval Godrej asking if they had messed up. Mr Godrej said they were far from it, and that this was only the begin-ning.
In 1987, a visit from ISRO’s Prof U R Rao sealed thee deal between G&B and ISRO - a liaison that continues till today.
Harini Alladi
Dr. Kalam in Vikhroli, 1990s
Mr. Naval Godrej’s invitation to Prof. U R Rao of ISRO
Soon after India bid a reluctant adieu to Dr. Kalam, we found a few photos in our collection of his visit to Vikhroli in the 90s. On looking further, we found ourselves delving into Godrej’s foray into aerospace.
The Archives Times
Last year, Godrej Archives successfully switched from ex-cel sheets to a digital platform for managing its archives col-lection - Cumulus digital assets management system was pro-cured in the year 2014. It’s complete implementation took over 6 months, and from Janu-ary 2015 onwards Godrej Ar-chives went live on Cumulus. Implementation was a very exhaustive process. Till the year 2015 all record details were maintained on excel sheets, and most importantly the team had grown used to the existing system for over 8 years. Although certain standardisa-tion rules were followed they were just apt for excel. Overall, the system as it was, could not be readily linked with Cumulus. Although there was no resistance on the part of the team to adopt a new technology, it took some time to change the entire mind-set and think in terms of a digital plat-form. The team extended all the support, shared all the bits and pieces of knowledge and ex-perience to complete the pic-ture of Cumulus. The first phase of the project involved studies and discus-sions. Archival processes, workflows and system were studied in depth and number of discussions were held to ensure that all the ‘must have’, ‘desired’ and ‘provisional’ fea-tures are integrated in Cu-mulus. The software was then customised accordingly.
The third phase of software training was the most important which had 3 sub-phases. Ad-ministrative training was very technical in nature like server management, Cumulus mainte-
nance, customizing features, creating users etc. Once the training was completed, the team spent considerable time in testing the software and ingest-ing sample records. After fine tuning the software on the basis of the testing phase feedback we were all ready to move on to Cumulus. The first new record was in-gested on January 5, 2015. The archives team is now well versed with Cumulus. We now using Cumulus not only to catalogue records but also to search, gen-erate reports and for many other administrative purposes. After the smooth implementation of the software, the main task to be tackled is of migrating over 1 lakh records which are main-tained on excel sheets. Data mi-gration is preceded by data cu-ration. Records in excel sheets need to be standardized and some additional data needs to be gathered to match Cumulus standards. In addition to this lot of planning is required to ensure that records are sorted as per new standards, renumbered accurately, have desired visual representation and adhere to overall standards. As migration is a huge activity, we need a dedicated resource person to work on it. As of now, we appoint interns from history and library science for this pur-pose. They are trained to use Cumulus, provided detail infor-mation about this project and its importance, and are guided ex-tensively to ensure high quality work. So far we have ingested ap-proximately 2600 new records and 1100 old records to Cumu-lus. Considering the volume of collection to be migrated and various activities associated with
migration, it will take years before we complete the mi-gration project. We are pri-oritizing migration by the us-ability and importance of re-cords. Quality checking and record keeping is follows data migration. The migrated records are checked for cor-rections and improvements to meet the expected quality of data. Record keeping includes providing cross entries of new record numbers against the old record numbers in excel sheets. This gives a clear idea of the records already mi-grated, their new numbers, migration date etc. With our current license, Cumulus is accessible only at Godrej Archives. A researcher or any interested employee is welcome to the Archives to access it. Nowadays the Archives team refers to Cumulus to answer research queries. This is restricted as we still have a hybrid setup and only few records are migrated from old collection. As this number increases we will have seamless access and optimal utilization of Cumulus.
Godrej Archives Goes Digital
2015 - 2016
An archive needs to stay up-to-date with technological develop-ments in order to be useful. Godrej Archives took the leap last year and went digital. Our Digital Archivist Amruta Marathe tells us how.
The Archives Times
What does it take to be the best business archive? What kind of innovative methods are being applied to manage the business collections across world? How does one measure success of an archive’s activity? To ad-dress many such issues, 120 corporate archivists around the globe came together at the an-nual conference of the Section of Business Archives (SBA) of International Council of Archives at Milan in June 2015. SBA sees the importance of providing a platform for archi-vists across globe to share their experiences and their knowl-edge of maintaining a business archive. The annual SBA confer-ence has become a ‘place where questions meet answers, history meets management and archives become a business’. The 2015 conference was hosted by Intesa Sanpaolo in the auditorium of Pirelli’s Head-quarters in the new Bicocca district, Milan, Italy. The confer-ence started with an overview of the Italian Business Archive Scene and discussed pertinent issues of the archives world over the next two days. Partici-pants discussed a variety of topics including innovative models of management for business archives; new meth-ods of managing business collections and clients; meeting the demands of the academic research community and a global business; legal and regulatory issues pertaining to business archives especially in case of pharmaceut ica l company; how does a business archive measure success; the role and sustainability of an archive in the world of business, etc. From the point of view of India, where business archives are at
a nascent stage, the agenda seemed relevant and the confer-ence indeed was an enlighten-ing experience. Archivists all over the globe shared the
knowledge about how corporate archives measure and achieve a good return on investment of an archive’s activity. A discussion on business archives in emerging markets was particularly of interest. In developed countries company information is more widely available than in emerging economies, where organizations tend to be more guarded. Firms that are often closely held by families/ or are controlled by the State are many times not open to outside researchers. Government archives especially in a country like India are slow in recognising the importance of the business archives in under-standing how businesses navi-gate through the political or economic events that take
place, and how they have cre-ated value for the societies. Thus due to non-availability of records and the lack of will to preserve them, there isn’t adequate information avail-able on the history of busi-nesses in these emerging markets. N o w t h a t t h e s t a t e of emerging markets matters more to the world than ever before, one cannot afford to ignore the histories as many of these economies have helped drive global recovery for years following the finan-cial crisis. It becomes all the more important to strengthen the process of archiving busi-nesses in these emerging economies all over the world including India, China, Middle East, Latin America and parts of Africa. The three presenta-tions showcasing business archives scenario in China and India; and the other one reflecting on the benefits of archive management to busi-nesses in countries like Saudi Arabia were reflective of the efforts that are being put to-gether in these emerging economies. Yet much is to be done in the developing part of the world and the confer-ences such as these are quite educative to take these efforts ahead.
SBA Meeting in progress
What’s Current in Archives World-over?
2015 - 2016
Every year, business archivists from around the world gather in the International Council of Archives confer-ence on Business Archives. Our chief Archivist Vrunda Pathare’s annual archival sojourn was to Milan last June. Here are her notes on the latest trends in archival discourse
Vrunda Pathare chairing the session on session on ‘Business Archives in Emerging Markets’ at ICA SBA confer-
The Archives Times
2015 - 2016
2015-2016 Events Calendar A glance at all the events we have had in the last year!
Dr. Ramchandra Guha delivering the 11th Godrej Archives Lecture, January 2016
Vijay Crishna, Navroze Godrej and Jamshyd Godrej at the lecture
Dr. Ramchandra Guha releasing the publication of first ten annual lectures.
Full House at the Godrej Archives talk by Dr. Ross Bassett
Dr. Ross Bassett delivering a Godrej Archives talk ‘MIT and the Technological Indian’ at Godrej, Vikhroli, March 2016
Audience at the 11th Godrej Archives Lecture
Adi Godrej, Nadir Godrej and Dr. Pheroza Godrej at a Godrej Archives talk by Dr. Ross Bassett
Jeremy Mayer in conversation with Art Historian Prajna Desai August 2015
Navroze Godrej, Raika Godrej and Dr. Pheroza Godrej unveiling the Lotus - a sculpture made of typewriter parts by sculptor Jeremy Mayer, August 2015
We’d love to engage in a dialogue. Send us your feedback and comments to [email protected] Godrej Archives, Plant 19A, 6796-2014/4124
Glimpses of the B P Godrej Birth Centenary Exhibition, June 2015
