A pioneer of post-independence Indian industry
In 1947 — the year of India’s independence — Kanhiya Lal Garg founded The Industrial Gases Limited in Calcutta, incorporated on 25 July 1947. He set out to manufacture the gases a newly industrialising nation would depend on: industrial and medical oxygen, and acetylene for cutting, welding and fabrication.
It was a bet on Indian self-reliance at the very moment the country won its freedom — building the capacity to produce, at home, the gases that power steel, engineering, construction and healthcare.
An engineer and a builder
Under his leadership as Managing Director, the company did more than supply gas — it built the means to produce it. The Industrial Gases Limited manufactured acetylene generators, oxygen plants, gas-purification systems, flashback arrestors and welding & gas-cutting equipment.
That engineering depth is a matter of record: contemporary documentation covers the company’s acetylene-generator technology, carbide-to-water engineering, gas purification, pressure regulation and industrial-safety systems — the same disciplines the company is known for to this day.
An international vision, decades ahead of its time
Long before “globalisation” entered the vocabulary of Indian business, K. L. Garg looked outward. As Managing Director he negotiated and signed an agreement with the Trade Representation of the USSR in India — pictured below alongside the Soviet Trade Commissioner and Consular General in Madras and the Chairman of the Madras State Electricity Board.
Building the nation’s industrial backbone
The enterprise he founded went on to supply the infrastructure of a growing India. The group installed oxygen and acetylene production for public-sector industry — including a 1965 agreement to supply the Diesel Locomotive Works, one of the country’s flagship railway manufacturing complexes.
The institutions he built also earned a place in national standards-making: the company and the next generation of the family served on the Bureau of Indian Standards gas-cylinder committees, contributing to the codes the industry follows.
A legacy carried across four generations
The Industrial Gases Limited grew into a group of companies — International Industrial Gases Ltd and The Kamrup Industrial Gases Ltd among them — led ever since by four generations of the Garg family.
The values K. L. Garg set in 1947 — engineering rigour, safety, and dependable supply — still define the company today. Every cylinder filled and every plant commissioned traces back to the standard he set as a founder.
The founder’s era, in pictures
