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Sample site: the Ponvel Group, its companies, people and numbers are invented.

The group

Three generations on Omalur Road

My father, P. Ponnusamy, started a sago unit on Omalur Road in 1958 with two drying yards and a borrowed rasper. He bought tapioca from farmers he knew by name and paid them on the day of delivery. Most of what we have built since grew from that habit.

The lorries came because the sago had to reach the railway. The spinning mill came because the starch was going to mills anyway. Each company began next to the one before it, and each one is registered and run on its own, with its own accounts and its own managers.

In 2009 we sent our first container of sago to Dubai, to a small company we set up in Deira. Today the group has a company in the UAE and one in Oman. They trade in what the family knows: food and cloth.

My son Arun took over as Managing Director of the holding company this year. I stay as Chairman, and I still visit the sago unit most mornings.

If you have a question for any of our companies, the contact page says whom to write to. Every registration number on this site can be checked, and we would rather you checked than took our word.

Velmurugan PonnusamyChairman, Ponvel Holdings · second generation1 Jul 2026

The timeline

  1. 1958Ponvel Sago & Starch begins
  2. 1971Ponvel Roadways begins
  3. 1974The sago unit becomes a private limited company
  4. 1986Ponvel Spinning Mills begins
  5. 1994Ponvel Vidyalaya begins
  6. 1996Velmurugan Ponnusamy takes over from the founder
  7. 1999Ponvel Packaging begins
  8. 2004Ponvel Holdings is formed to hold the family's shares
  9. 2009Ponvel Foodstuff Trading begins
  10. 2014Ponvel Solar begins
  11. 2016Ponvel Textiles begins
  12. 2019The third generation joins the boards
  13. 2021Ponvel Foods begins
  14. 2026Arun Velmurugan becomes Managing Director

What we hold to

Four things we hold to, and what they cost us

Each one is a choice we make again every month, and each has a price.

  1. We pay farmers and suppliers within 15 days

    Instead of stretching them to 90 days to fund ourselves

    It costs us working capital. It has kept the same tapioca farmers with us for three generations.

  2. We keep every company's books separate

    Instead of moving money between companies when one is short

    Each company borrows on its own record, and a bad year in one does not sink another.

  3. We grow next to what we know

    Instead of buying into businesses because they are in fashion

    Sago led to lorries, lorries to yarn, yarn to cloth in Muscat. We have said no to real estate twice.

  4. We print our registration numbers and ask you to check them

    Instead of asking you to trust the family name

    Every company on this site shows its CIN, GSTIN or foreign registration, with a link to the official register wherever the register is public.