Remembering on his Jayanti, the person behind world renowned #MANIPAL Group, Dr Tonse Madhava Anant Pai/ TMA Pai.
Let me tell you how a Registered Medical Practitioner built a Mighty Bank, World Class Health Care System and Renowned University.
Born in the year 1898, Dr TMA Pai,

then a young doctor graduated from Madras Medical College, stayed back to set up Udupi’s first Allopathic clinic. Dr TMA Pai had expressed a desire to go to Hong Kong when his mother advised him to set up a practice at Udupi. “Jait-amma”– that’s all he said.

According to Prof Kamath , it is at this psychological point in time that Manipal was born. The above narrative is from former Chairman of Prasar Bharati, Prof M V Kamath, the Kamath’s & Pai’s are friends for generations.
Pai, started a bank, along with his brother, Upendra Pai

& V S Kudva in Udupi in 1925. The bank had a long-worded name: Canara Industrial and Banking Syndicate. This was later changed to Syndicate Bank.

Pai used to double up as both doctor & banker in the early years of the bank. This professional combination may raise eyebrows today

but it served the bank very well. As a doctor, he knew Udupi and the surrounding areas well and, as a result, could develop banking services tailored to local demands.
One evening, he prescribed a lady patient medicines which were hardly expensive. As he was closing his clinic,

he saw the same patient sitting outside. The patient said that she had no money to buy the medicine. On further questioning, Pai realized she had no savings whatsoever to spend on his prescription. Pai lent her some money. But then the thought just struck him: how come people

do not have any savings?
More importantly, can my bank help in the important endeavour that was helping them save?

After much thought, Pai formulated something called the #Pigmy Deposit Scheme. The idea was to mobilize any amount of small savings from all possible income groups

regularly. A depositor had the flexibility of making these pigmy deposits daily, weekly or monthly. But once they chose a frequency, they had to deposit money on time. People were exhorted to save as little as 25 paise daily, which at the end of 7 years would be accumulate to

Rs700 at a simple interest rate of 3.5%.
Pai understood that people would not come to the bank to deposit their savings due to a lack of self-control, discipline and even awareness. To address this, he appointed door-to-door deposit collectors. These collectors visited

depositors at home, as per their committed frequency, to collect these deposits.

The impact of this scheme was widely felt. It demonstrated the importance of thrift and savings to people—many of whom had no grounds to appreciate this before. In fact, this was a time when most

parts of India, including Udupi, suffered from usurious interest rates. But here was a bank which not just gave them loans at lower rates, but even promoted their well-being via savings.
After Udupi’s 1st Allopathic Clinic & later Syndicate bank, Pai set up a school in 1942

followed by the MGM college in 1949.
He was the first to start a private, self-financing medical college offering MBBS in India. Pai established the Kasturba Medical College in 1953 and Manipal Institute of Technology in 1957, which was followed by a string of other education

institutions including Manipal College of Dental Sciences, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Manipal Pre-University College.
Over the last 50 years, the group has grown from a single primary school to Lakhs of students in a multitude of disciplines with campuses in

Manipal, Mangalore and Bangalore, Sikkim in the North-East and as far as Dubai, Nepal, Malaysia and Antigua giving about 800 engineers and 730 doctors year after year.

Dr. Pai was conferred the Padma Shri by the Indian government in 1972.

Dr T M A Pai attained sadgati on 29th May 1979.

#VANDEMATARAM