Ambattur

Ambattur is located in northwestern part of Chennai City, in Ambattur taluk of the Chennai District, surrounded by Avadi, Anna Nagar, Padi, Mogappair, Kallikuppam, Surapet, Korattur, Ayappakkam, Athipet and Thiruverkadu. It covers an area of . The neighbourhood is served by Ambattur railway station of the Chennai Suburban Railway. Ambattur has its origins in a village of the same name which can be located at present as areas opposite to Ambattur telephone exchange. Ambattur was a village with large extents of agricultural farm lands irrigated by the once-sprawling Ambattur Lake. In 2011, the neighbourhood had a population 466,205. This place is one of 108 Shakthi Sthals in the country. The Amman temple (for the Hindu deity Durga) here is the fifty-first in the order, giving the locality the Tamil name "aimbaththu onraam oor" (ஐம்பத்து ஒன்றாம் ஊர்), meaning fifty-first place/temple village, which later transmuted as Ambattur. The goddess is worshiped in the form of Vaishnavi. Ambattur is also called so because it was a collaboration of 51 small towns (ambathu onraam oor in Tamil), from which the name Ambattur was derived. Along with Avadi, Sembium, Ennore and Tiruvottriyur, Ambattur is part of the "auto belt" in the city's industrial north and west regions that developed when the automobile industry developed in Madras, in the early post-World War II years. Sir Ivan Stedeford, chairman of Tube Investments, United Kingdom, was instrumental in starting the TI factory and TII complex in the country. Sir Ivan signed a joint venture agreement with A. M. Murugappa Chettiar of the Murugappa Group, which was then a small business house manufacturing sandpaper and abrasives for the war effort and also trading war surplus. It was the first joint venture agreement to be signed in South India after Independence. This resulted in the establishment of the TI Cycle factory in a mango grove in Ambattur by 1951, and manufacture of the 'Hercules India' bicycle soon began. By 1954, the word 'India' was dropped from the name when international quality standards were met.