Jagannathan, who brought ‘Prestige’ to kitchens, dies

BENGALURU: chairman emeritus T T Jagannathan, who transformed a modest cookware company into Prestige, one of India’s most beloved homegrown brands, died on Friday at the age of 77.

An engineer from IIT Madras with a master’s degree from Cornell University, Jagannathan returned to India in the early 1970s to help steady his family’s struggling business. Barely in his 20s, he took charge of TTK Prestige and began re-engineering both its products and its image.

In the late 1970s, when reports of faulty threatened the company’s reputation, he designed the now-iconic gasket release system, a safety valve that changed how Indian households viewed cookware. A 1980s television spot linked a husband’s affection for his wife with her safety in the kitchen. It turned a functional appliance into an emblem of care and modern aspiration, cementing Prestige’s place in popular culture for decades. Over the years, Jagannathan steered the company through near-bankruptcy to global expansion, launching Manttra in the US and acquiring the UK’s Horwood Homewares. Manttra is currently the top selling Indian brand in US stores and it has become the leading pressure cooker brand in the US, commanding over 40% of the market.

Under his watch, Prestige evolved from a pressure-cooker manufacturer to a full kitchen-solutions brand spanning cookware, electrical appliances, and home-care products. Even as Prestige rose to national prominence, it faced fierce rivalry from Hawkins Cookers, whose loyal consumer base swore by its durable designs and traditional model of distribution. For decades, the two names dominated India’s pressure cooker market, their competition spurring innovations in design and safety features across the industry.
Smaller players like Butterfly Gandhimathi and Pigeon managed to carve niches, yet it was the Prestige-Hawkins duel that often set the tone for pricing battles, marketing strategies, and product diversification in Indian kitchens.

Jagannathan’s insistence on blending engineering precision with an emotional connect proved critical in keeping Prestige ahead in that contest, winning newer urban consumers even as Hawkins held sway in legacy markets.