G. A. Menon

G. A. Menon (1931–2003) was the Chairman of 14 companies around the world. Born in North Paravur in Kerala, he majored in mathematics at Madras University and went to Harvard Business School. He began his career as a Systems Manager with IBM in India. When IBM closed down in India in 1978, he moved to Singapore where he joined the Chandaria Group. As an employee of Chandaria Group, he set up Multi Tech Systems, which merged with Venture Manufacturing Singapore Ltd in 1989. Venture Manufacturing is one of the largest electronics manufacturing companies in the world. Menon continued to be the Chairman of Venture Corporation until his death.

After becoming a successful entrepreneur, he first came to Kerala with a proposal to set up a Rs 6,000-crore petrochemical complex at Kasaragod, which did not take off. Subsequently, he set up the two Technopark companies namely US Software and Toonz Animation. Other companies, he was involved in India, were Dexcel Electronic Designs, Bangalore and Customer Line, Kochi.

He was also the founder and chairman of US-based Magnecomp International. The company was a manufacturer of the suspension assembly, an extremely high-precision component used in the read/write heads of computer hard disk drives.