Søren Kristian Toubro
Søren Kristian Toubro (27 February 1906 – 4 March 1982) was a Danish engineer who co-founded the engineering firm Larsen & Toubro, an India-based conglomerate. Early days in India Toubro began his career as a civil engineer. As an employee of F. L. Smidth & Co. of Copenhagen, he came to India in 1934 to erect and commission the equipment supplied to the Madukkarai Cement Works (near Coimbatore) and the Rohri Cement Factory (near the Sukkur Barrage in Sindh). Sometime after landing in India, he read a report in The Bombay Chronicle that quoted Mohandas K. Gandhi as saying: "(I am) not leading a movement to rid India of its white colonial masters in order to substitute them with brown ones." Toubro felt that such an India would "offer great opportunities to anyone with modern technological and management skills." Larsen & Toubro In 1938, Toubro partnered with his former schoolmate Henning Holck-Larsen, a chemical engineer and a fellow F.L.Smidth's employee, to establish Larsen & Toubro. The idea of L&T was conceived during a holiday in Matheran, a hill station near Mumbai. Holck-Larsen was a risk-taker while Toubro was more conservative. Larsen & Toubro saw opportunities in India at a time,