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Now it is known as HMT limited but earlier it was known as Hindustan Machine Tools Limited. It is a holding company which is owned by the state. This public sector undertaking was started on 7th January , 1953. So, now it has been successfully running for 69 years. It was started by the Government of India.
History of HMT
Since its establishment 69 years ago in 1953 for manufacturing machine tools , HMT has now had a broad involvement in watches, tractors, printing presses, plastic processing machinery, CNC systems and bearings.
Now HMT has a lot of subsidiaries. Mainly six subsidiaries are there. Since it is headquartered at Bengaluru, it has ample exposure to newer technologies which makes work easier .
Pragya Tools Limited
It was started in the month of may in the year 1943. During the initial stage it was known as Pragya Tools Corporation Limited and their main motive was to make machine related tools. It was headquartered in Kavadiguda, which is a place in Secunderabad in Telangana.
In 1963 when the Ministry of Defence took over it was renamed as Pragya Tools Limited. Pragya tools became one of the subsidiaries of HMT as it took over the company in 1886 . After that takeover Pragya tools is now under the Industries Ministry of India.
Watches and HMT
HMT also had started a manufacturing factory of watches. This was set up in Bangalore and M/s Citizen Watch Co. Japan was collaborating with HMT in this new venture. The special feature about these watches was that they were hand wounded. The first set of the watches were released by Jawaharlal Nehru, who was then the Prime Minister of India. The most famous of those hand wound watches was known as HMT Janata. There were other types of watches such as a HMT Pilot, HMT Jhalak ,HMT Sona, HMT Braille which were mechanical, semi skeletal and both skeletal respectively.
1972 saw HMT expand its watch making facility to increase the number of watches manufactured. Soon after this, in 1975 the facility was expanded further to produce main and hair springs along with some shock absorbing components.
By 1985 they had a manufacturing facility in Tumkur which was made to produce Quartz Analog watches along with M/s Citizen Watch Co. Another facility was made just to produce proper boxes for the watches as it had the capability to bring in other sophisticated buyers.
After diving deep into the watch market they even made Floral clocks, international clocks, tower clocks etc. However in 2000 the partnership was let go of and it became a complete subsidiary of HMT Limited. This restructuring led its name to HMT Watches Limited. The company and its website both were shut down by the government by September of 2014 ( the website by 2016).
The sudden surge of interest and demand of these hand wound mechanical watches on reselling apps made the government reconsider their decision and reopen the company by 2019 .
Manufacturing units.
HMT had 18 manufacturing units which consisted of the subsidiary companies too. One of the most famous subsidiaries was the HMT’s tractor company. It was an international collaboration with Czechoslovakian company M/s MOTOKOV. A plant in Haryana was set up for the production. Initially it started with 25 HP tractors and now they range from that to 75 HP. This is still owned by the holding company.
Only the original Machine Tools manufacturing part of the company is found to continue the production. The particular unit of Kochi now manufactures gears systems used for directing machines in the Indian Navy.
Conclusion
HMT was one of the important government undertaking companies which produced many goods and products for niche customers as well as government organisations. It had to face many ups and downs and now it stands with 3 running subsidiaries and 3 subsidiaries which have been shut down. Some hope was seen when messages were circulated about the website of the HMT watches would be back again and selling the mechanical hands bound watches.
