Speaking at Belagavi at Malini city while launching multiple development initiatives, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Baburao Pusalkar 100 years ago started Startup culture in Belagavi.
Karnataka is known as a startup hub now, but 100 years ago, Baburao Pusalkar from Belagavi started this Startup culture with his garage in Camp and then Belgaum Electro Motors Company .
Over a century ago, BabuRao Pusalkar, an ambitious entrepreneur, established a small unit in Belagavi city; since then, it has become a hub for foundries and hydraulics units. Now, the city proudly boasts a large number of crankshaft, industrial castings and forging, machinery, hydraulics, and aluminium manufacturing units.
About Baburao Pusalkar
Despite not being well-educated, he began his career as a truck cleaner and eventually purchased two buses of his own. He then added two more trucks. During the Second World War, when fuel was scarce, he was wiped out and had to leave Bijapur for Belgaum, where he started a garage in Camp.
After the war, there was a huge shortage of essential items, so he adapted and began manufacturing flour mills, becoming India’s best chakki maker. The railways then approached him to make jacks, and within a year, BEMCO had become India’s number one jack-making company. He later ventured into hydraulics and became a pioneer in Belagavi.
In 1959, Baburao Pusalkar in Germany arranged a collaboration with Vogel & Co. for him, for the manufacture of hydraulic presses – the first of its kind in India.
These units have recently begun to receive substantial orders from the shipping, defence, and space industries.
Belgaum Motors later was called BEMCO.
The soil of BGM is a spring board & has produced talented personalities. Today’s talented youths should take cue from century old famous personality Baburao & should build host of start-ups