From software jobs to tricolour flags: Hyderabad family’s patriotic business journey

A Hyderabad-based family from Khammam has spent the past decade manufacturing India’s national flags. What began with 30 women in a small workshop has grown into a business supplying hundreds of flags across 18 States, with the family following official flag regulations.

Hyderabad: For this family, patriotism is not just a passion or sentiment, but a continued profession stitched into every fibre of India’s national flag for the past decade.

Hailing from Khammam and settled in Hyderabad, the family, including K Sanjeeva Rao, K Padmavathi and two of their sons, K Srikanth and K Gowtham, continues their journey after having stitched and installed a giant national flag measuring 108 feet by 72 feet, country’s second-tallest tricolour flag, at Sanjeevaiah Park on the shores of Hussain Sagar.

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Both K Sanjeeva Rao and K Padmavathi had worked in the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA). The idea of manufacturing national flags emerged after Rao, a vexillologist, i.e., an expert who studies the history, meaning, and design of flags, visited 13 countries across the globe and collected national, historical, and regional flags.

“He is also a numismatist and philatelist. The hobby eventually turned into a passion and a business,” Padmavathi, founder of Flags and Poles, told ‘Telangana Today’.

“Initially, a small workshop was set up at Khammam with 30 women from self-help groups for stitching the national flags, packaging them, and supplying them to schools and government departments. Over time, given the response, we established Flags and Poles, she said.

In 2016, the then MA&UD minister, KT Rama Rao, provided them an opportunity to manufacture and install the national flag through the HMDA. “Presently, we are manufacturing 300 to 400 national flags each month and supplying them across 18 States to various central and state government departments,” said Padmavathi.

Quality polyester cloth is procured from spinning mills in Surat, Gujarat, and high standards are maintained as the national flags should not tear during heavy winds and gales, she explains, adding, “We strictly follow the Flag Code of India-2002 rules and regulations while stitching flags.”

Srikant and Gowtham left their software careers to join their parents in the flags business.

Srikant, who pursued a Master of Science in Information Technology and worked in the US and Australia, and Gowtham, who worked as a software professional for the ‘Automated Teller Machines’ in Hyderabad, joined their parents.