The boy scout K. Balakrishna Pillai of Mavellikkara in Kerala left home one day and joined Tata Steels at Jamshedpur all by himself. Work experience backed by education up to the middle school level was sufficient enough to start life as an entrepreneur. He married Padmavathi Ammal and after the birth of his first child Aravindan, he moved over to Coimbatore and came up with 'Padma Electricals' on a rented space in Kattoor. K.Balakrishna Pillai started to use his technical expertise by maintaining and winding the generators belonging to cinema halls and factories. Some of his customers used to bring the famous 'Braun' brand appliances for service and this opened up the world of appliances for the innovative technocrat.
K.Balakrishna Pillai began manufacturing mixies in the sixties of the last century with an aluminium body and used to market his products by cycle during the early years. The reliable 'Meenu Mix' produced by Balakrishna Pillai began to steadily find acceptance in the market. Years went by and Shantha , the first daughter of Balakrishna Pillai got married to Madhusudhanan who was serving in the Border Security Force ( BSF ). Since the other kids were really young the Founder asked his son in law to join him in business. The enterprising K. Balakrishna Pillai treated Madhusudhanan as his own son and entrusted the work connected with branding and marketing to him. Thanks to the bigger management team at 'Meenu Mix' the brand started to spread from Coimbatore to a number of other cities too. This took the brand and business to a different level. Meanwhile Sasidharan, the second son put in his bit by bringing up good designs and dies for Meenu Mix. The marriage of the second daughter Vasantha to Jayagopal an alumnus of Coimbatore Institute of Technology who was working at Kenya brought in one more person into the team and he was involved in product development. The team got further enriched with the other son Ravikumar taking over administration and his knowledge of legislations and the functioning of the various departments were to help the company well.
The 'corner showroom' of Meenu Mix at the Somasundaram Mills road was the first legendary outfit of the brand and was very successful for decades. Over the years Meenu Mix had factories in Pappanaicken Palayam ( 1973 ), a larger factory near the Sri Ramakrishna Hospital ( around 1980 ), a plant at Siddhapudur and one at Ganapathy too for making grinders. In all about 200 people were employed in all the units. The brand started using innovative methods for advertising and its presence could be felt through the radio, hoardings and newspapers of the times. Very quickly the production touched 7000 mixies and one had to wait for up to 10 days in order to take delivery of the product. It was running on advance payment and at one time the production surged past 20000 units.
Meenu Mix had several features and schemes which were part of its Unique Selling Prepositions or USP. First of all, it was a low noise mixer and women were really comfortable due to this attribute. The company was the first in its field to get an ISI certification and offer free life time service. The full stainless steel jar with a handle, a separate chutney jar, unique colour , stylish design and vibration free running were some of the features which made Meenu Mix endearing. The hard working family of Balakrishna Pillai really lived up to the by line ' Helpfully Yours ' by offering the best of sales and service. The safari clad Founder was always found with a wad of currency and he believed in individual charity. He was a hands on person who was found in his unit with a beedi on his lips at any given point of time. K.Balakrishna Pillai never sought publicity and he made enduring friendships with S.N.R.Venkatesalu ( Ramakrishna group ), Annapoorna K.Damodaraswamy Naidu and Lakshmi Grinders Krishnamurthy. He was a recipient of several awards all his career. Meenu Mix was a cash rich company for a long time.
Sathish Kumar of Ess Emm Corporation who happens to be one of the grandsons of K.Balakrishna Pillai is happy to share some interesting details, " A number of hotels and restaurants used Meenu Mix to hasten up their work and Pazhamudir began their juice business with our product. If I am not mistaken their first outlet that sold fresh juices was located next to Gowri Sankar opposite to the Court. My grandfather was a visionary and unfortunately he passed away in the midst of his busy career by the year 1986. He celebrated his Sashtiabdha Poorthi in a grand manner at the Seshadri Swamigal Mahal on 100 feet road and interestingly he offered a ' Mixie Thulabaram ' ( mixies equal to his weight ) to the Sri Krishna Temple in Guruvayoor. All the grand children of his are intelligent and are doing well in their own way."
Meenu Mix brought in the mobile service concept and several movie world celebrities inaugurated their showrooms in Madras, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Parvathamma Rajkumar, Gemini Ganesh were among them. The mixies started off in a big way at Rs.375 per piece and those were the years of superb profits. Several of the dealers who made their beginning with Meenu Mix became big business people with the passage of time due to the strength of the brand. Nowadays Meenu Mix has been taken over by a Bahrain based company and its business is largely export oriented. Thanks to Meenu Mix, Coimbatore has become a reliable appliance manufacturing centre with many brands joining the fray.