Kochi, also known by its former name Cochin, is a major port city along the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of Kerala. The city is also commonly referred to as Ernakulam. As of 2011, the Kochi Municipal Corporation had a population of 677,381 over an area of 94.88 km2, and the larger Kochi urban agglomeration had over 2.1 million inhabitants within an area of 440 km2, making it the largest and the most populous metropolitan area in Kerala. Kochi city is also part of the Greater Cochin development region and is classified as a Tier-II city by the Government of India. The civic body that governs the city is the Kochi Municipal Corporation, which was constituted in the year 1967, and the statutory bodies that oversee its development are the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) and the Goshree Islands Development Authority (GIDA).
Mohanlal Viswanathan is an Indian actor, film producer, playback singer, film distributor, and director who predominantly works in Malayalam film industry besides also having sporadically appeared in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu and Kannada films. Mohanlal has a prolific career spanning over four decades, during which he has acted in more than 400 films. Mohanlal's contributions to the Malayalam cinema have been praised by his contemporaries in the Indian film industry. The Government of India honoured him with Padma Shri in 2001, and Padma Bhushan in 2019, India's fourth and third highest civilian honours, for his contributions to Indian cinema. In 2009, he became the first actor in India to be awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel in the Territorial Army. Mohanlal was named as one of "the men who changed the face of the Indian Cinema" by CNN-News18.
Apollo Tyres Limited is an Indian multinational tyre manufacturing company headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana. It was incorporated in 1972, and its first plant was commissioned in Perambra in Chalakudy, Kerala. The company now has five manufacturing units in India, one in the Netherlands and one in Hungary. The company generates 69% of its revenues from India, 26% from Europe and 5% from other countries. Apollo announced its entry into the two-wheeler tyre segment with contract manufacturing in March 2016.
Elattuvalapil Sreedharan is an Indian engineer and politician from the Indian state of Kerala. He is credited with changing the face of public transport in India with his leadership in building the Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro while he served as the managing director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) between 1995 and 2012. Known as the Metro Man, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2001, the Padma Vibhushan in 2008, the Chevalier de la Legion of Honour in 2005 by the Government of France and was named one of Asia's Heroes by Time magazine in 2003. Sreedharan was appointed by the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to serve on the United Nations's High Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport (HLAG-ST) for a period of three years in 2015. He is a member of Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board. He briefly served as a national executive council member of Bharatiya Janata Party, but later quit active politics in December 2021. He also worked as an advisor of Dhaka Metro authority which is called Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited under the Railway Ministry of Bangladesh.
HMT Limited, formerly Hindustan Machine Tools Limited, is an Indian state-owned manufacturing company under the control of the Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India. It was founded in 1953 as a machine tool manufacturing company, diversifying into watches, tractors, printing machinery, metal forming presses, die casting and plastic processing machinery, and CNC systems and bearings. HMT is headquartered at Bangalore.
TVS Motor Company is an Indian multinational motorcycle manufacturer headquartered in Chennai. It is the third-largest motorcycle company in India by revenue. The company has annual sales of three million units and an annual production capacity of over four million vehicles. TVS Motor Company is also the second largest two-wheeler exporter in India with exports to over 60 countries.
The economy of South India after independence in 1947 conformed to a socialist framework, with strict governmental control over private sector participation, foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). Through 1960–1990, South Indian economies experienced mixed economic growth. In the 1960s, Kerala achieved above-average economic growth, while Andhra Pradesh's economy declined during this period. Similarly, Kerala experienced an economic decline in the 1970s while the economies of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka consistently exceeded national average growth rates after 1970. South India first started to overtake the rest of India economically in the 1980s. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were noted by some to be more reform-oriented in terms of economic policy when compared to other Indian states. Over the last decade South India has grown at 8% annually. Future economic growth will be shackled by a relatively low proportion of the active age population to the number of dependents. Today, South India has about 20% of India's population, and contributes about 31% of India's GDP; it is projected to contribute 35% by 2030.
PVR INOX Ltd, formerly known as PVR Cinemas, is an Indian multiplex chain based in Mumbai. It was formed as a result of the merger between PVR Cinemas and INOX Leisure Multiplex. PVR pioneered the multiplex revolution in India by establishing the first multiplex cinema in 1997 at Saket, New Delhi. In 2022, PVR Cinemas achieved the milestone of completing 25 years in the business. As of December 2023, PVR Inox has 1747 screens across 359 properties in 114 cities.
Jagat and Anita Nanjappa are a well-known couple in the sport of motor racing in India. They belong to the Kodava community and are natives of Kodagu district of Karnataka. They have participated and won many motorbike and car rallies in India. Jagat is usually the driver while his wife Anita dons the role of the navigator. Together, they have won nine Indian National Rally Riders Championship awards in the motorbike section from 1986 to 1996. Known for their grit and determination, they once completed a rally despite having a flat rear tyre with Anita having to sit on the petrol tank of the bike for a distance of 70 kilometres (43 mi) to reduce the weight on the flat tyre.
The Kochi Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city of Kochi and the wider Kochi Metropolitan Region in Kerala, India. It was opened to the public within four years of starting construction, making it one of the fastest completed metro projects in India. The Kochi metro project is the first metro system in the country which connects rail, road and water transport facilities. It is also the first metro rail system in India to be operated using the Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) signalling system, which requires minimum human intervention. The Kochi Water Metro is integrated with the Kochi Metro, which also serves as a feeder service to the suburbs along the rivers where transport accessibility is limited.
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualized, the modern states of South Asia include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. South Asia borders East Asia to the northeast, Central Asia to the northwest, West Asia to the west and Southeast Asia to the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and is bounded by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir Mountains in the north.
Yusuff Ali Musaliam Veettil Abdul Kader, popularly known as M. A. Yusuff Ali, is an Indian businessman and billionaire. He is the chairman and managing director of LuLu Group International, which owns the LuLu Hypermarket chain worldwide and LuLu International Shopping Mall. With an annual turnover of US$8.4 billion, LuLu Group International employs the largest number of Indian diaspora|. According to Forbes Middle East, Yusuff Ali was ranked No. 1 in Top 100 Indian business owners in the Arab World 2018. As per Forbes billionaires list published in October 2023, he was ranked 27th richest Indian with net worth of US$6.9 billion.
Chaudhary Group (CG Corp Global) is a multi-national conglomerate headquartered in Nepal. Its businesses include financial services, consumer goods, education, hospitality, energy, consumer electronics, real estate, biotech, and alternative medicine. The group owns 136 companies in 15 different business verticals across five continents.
Muthoot Finance Ltd is an Indian financial corporation and the largest gold loan NBFC in the country. In addition to financing gold loans, the company offers other forms of loans, insurance and money transfer services, and sells gold coins. The company is headquartered in Kochi, Kerala and operates over 5000 branches throughout the country. Outside India, Muthoot Finance is established in the UK, the US, and the United Arab Emirates.
Funskool (India) Ltd. is an Indian toy manufacturing company, founded in 1987 with headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Apart from its own brands and its American counterpart Playskool, the company also manufactures and distributes products in the Indian market under license from foreign toy brands including Hasbro, Disney, Warner Bros., Takara Tomy, and Ravensburger.
Loham: The Yellow Metal is a 2015 Indian Malayalam-language action thriller film written and directed by Ranjith, and produced by Antony Perumbavoor for the production company Aashirvad Cinemas. The film, starring Mohanlal, Renji Panicker, Siddique, Andrea Jeremiah and Ajmal Ameer is about an elusive smuggling operation and the mysterious disappearance of 100 kilograms (220 lb) of gold. Sreevalsan J. Menon and C. Rajamani composed the soundtrack and film score, respectively.
Waiting is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Anu Menon. Produced by Priti Gupta and Manish Mundra under the banner of Ishka Films and Drishyam Films respectively, the film was co-written by Menon and James Ruzicka, and stars Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin. Waiting focuses on the relationship between two people from different walks of life who befriend each other in a hospital, while nursing their respective comatose spouses. Rajat Kapoor, Suhasini Maniratnam, Arjun Mathur, Ratnabali Bhattacharjee and Rajeev Ravindranathan play supporting roles in the film.
Samten Bhutia is an Indian film director and writer from Sikkim. He has been actively involved in Nepalese film industry over the last decade. He recently directed Taandro which was screened at the Dhaka International film festival. His first film Latter was well received by people from Nepal and India. He also acted in a short film, Myth.
Berger Paints India Ltd is an Indian multinational paint company, based in Kolkata. This company has 16 manufacturing units in India, 2 in Nepal, 1 each in Poland and Russia. It has manufacturing units at Howrah and Rishra, Arinso, Taloja, Naltoli, Goa, Devla, Hindupur, Jejuri, Jammu, Puducherry and Anand. The company has presence in five countries – India, Russia, Poland, Nepal and Bangladesh. It has an employee strength of over 3,600 and a countrywide distribution network of more than 25,000 dealers.
2019 in Indian sports describes the year's events in Indian sport.
