Post Independence India was building its first five star hotel ‘The Ashoka’ in the 1950s. Due to shortage of foreign exchange a meeting was called by the first PM of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru ji & the hotel’s management team to explore if commercial kitchen equipment could be manufactured in India instead of importing them from USA, in that moment a young engineer Mr O.P. Mehra (who was working with a USA firm) took the initiative of developing & manufacturing commercial equipment for the first time in India. This lead to setting up of India’s first Commercial Kitchen Equipment manufacturing company in 1957 called Paramount Industries.