Wonderful read- an autobiography by SL Kirloskar, on starting and running a manufacturing conglomerate in early 1920s India

http://kirloskar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/cactus-and-roses.pdf

kingdom of Mysore invited them to setup a machine tools factory, and giving them the land and permits within weeks. In less than a year, the factory was up and running, and Brits sent experts from London to speed up production and bought all output during ww2.

it probably took much longer in the 1990s to setup a business. Posco's steel plant has been languishing over permits for decades. Its quite an achivement to do worse than the metrics from a colonial era.

After WW2 ended, the Allies, even India sent its industrialists to occupied German factories for 'inspection' and lifted any salvageable tech wholesale. lol.

worth investigating why India went from building motors, engines, boilers and machine tools to dhando type businesses where you import and markup and sell.

1950-90 was probably even worse than 1900-1950

Right after Independence, they applied for grant of land to setup a factory near Pune. The Collector in charge, now an Indian instead of British, denied it saying Pune was a city of pensioners and academics and a factory would ruin it.

Read this book in full