TT Jagannathan No More: How His Innovation GRS Changed Pressure Cooker Maker TTK's Fortunes

TT Jagannathan, chairman emeritus of kitchen appliance maker TTK Prestige Ltd., died on Oct. 9, leaving behind a legacy that transformed India’s home appliance industry. Known fondly as ‘The Kitchen Mogul’, Jagannathan served on the board of TTK Prestige for 50 years. He played a huge role in turning around the company, steering it from the brink of bankruptcy to a debt-free, billion-dollar enterprise.

His memoir, ‘Disrupt and Conquer – How TTK Prestige Became a Billion Dollar Company,’ chronicles the organisation’s journey and the moments that defined its success. Among these, one incident stands out.

Jagannathan recalled a shopkeeper in Lucknow telling him, “Your cookers are bursting, and nobody wants to buy them.” The shopkeeper also opened his warehouse to reveal rows of exploded Prestige cookers.

“I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. We had never experienced anything like this, and I could swear by all that I held dear about the quality of our production. How, then, had these cookers burst?” Jagannathan said.

He added that while the cookers were selling well in South India, sales in North India remained sluggish, prompting him to investigate the reason.

Visits to dealers and warehouses in the North confirmed the defects, explaining the poor sales. Jagannathan traced the problem to spurious spare parts. The stakes were high. “A bursting cooker can kill a person,” wrote Jagannathan in the book, adding, “It was not surprising that nobody was buying our cookers. That night I stayed up late in my hotel room and tried to figure out how to fix the problem.”

“Since it wasn’t possible for me to single-handedly stop the use of such spares, I had to come up with a solution that would prevent the cookers from bursting even if inferior-quality parts were used,” he said in the book.

Jagannathan then devised the Gasket Release System (GRS), a simple innovation that prevented cookers from exploding even if substandard parts were used.

Jagannathan explained that a pressure cooker uses a weight valve to release built-up steam, with a safety plug as a backup in case the valve fails. Faulty safety plugs in the market, however, were causing Prestige cookers to explode. The GRS ensured that if the weight valve or safety plug failed, a portion of the gasket was pushed out through a slot in the lid, releasing excess steam safely.

“I can confidently claim that not a single Prestige pressure cooker has burst since that day. The GRS is just a hole in the lid. But if it were not for that hole, the company would have gone bankrupt,” he said.

TT Jagannathan’s insight and problem-solving ability turned a potential disaster into a defining moment in TTK Prestige’s history. His legacy is not just in the appliances millions of Indian kitchens trust, but in the ingenuity and foresight that kept the brand alive.