While Receiving the Honorary Doctorate

Sadanand Maiya

Talking to TWB on receiving the Honorary Doctorate, he expressed his happiness and gratitude to the people of Karnataka and said that coming from a Brahmin family he was supposed to offer free food to poor and needy people, but in business he was helpless, and as an alternative, he had now decided to help the people in the field of Education under the banner of his own trust namely "Sadananda Maiya Charitable Trust".

The PU Block consisting of 6 floors will be named after him at Jayanagar National College campus at an estimated cost of Rs. 6 crore sponsored by him with latest hi end technologies, and will start functioning shortly. For MCA from next academic year, four floors will be almost ready by June and the remaining 2 floors will be ready by October he said. Besides this, he has donated 40 computers to his home town school and constructed PU Block at Kotta Viveka School and a well stocked library at Sneha Sagar School.

Belonging to a reputed hotelier family which had established the Mavalli Tiffin Room restaurant at Bangalore in 1924, Mr. Maiya imbibed the innate ability to "CREATE" foods with lasting taste and flavour even when he was studying in the school/college. While most of the boys at his age were more enamored by various extracurricular activities, Mr. Maiya chose to spend his leisure time to observe and learn the intricate art/skill of making new/innovative foods from his forefathers at MTR restaurant. It was this informal exposure, which had made him a real practitioner of art and science of cooking many traditional foods of South India.

Mr. Maiya was born at Parampaalli in Dakshina Kannada district (presently Udupi district) on July 13, 1949. After a brilliant school career in his native place, he completed the Bachelor of Engineering course in Electrical engineering at BMS College of Engineering, University of Bangalore in the year 1973.

Mr. Maiya, as a partner launched MTR Foods in 1976 and by 1978 established a small-scale facility to manufacture a host of ready mix products for many popular foods, which became instant hits in the market From a small-scale ready mix unit Mr. Maiya raised the status of his organisation to a major player in the industrial landscape of the country with high visibility and consumer goodwill. MTR Foods Ltd., as seen today, was incorporated in 1997 with Mr. Maiya as Chairman and Managing Director and growth of the organization ever since has been phenomenal, with the annual turnover of registering more than Rs. 1000 million during 2002-2003. Mr. Maiya was instrumental in transforming the status of his company from a small-scale unit to an ISO 9000 company with HACCP certification. Adoption of the internationally acclaimed -System Application Product in data processing, popularly known as "SAP", by MTR Foods Ltd, for bringing up the management efficiency to be on par with