The story
Apollo Tyres Limited was incorporated on 28 September 1972 in India as a public limited company and obtained certificate of Commencement of Business on 24 October 1972. The company was promoted by Bharat Steel Tubes, Ltd., Raunaq International Pvt. Ltd., Raunaq & Co. Pvt. Ltd., Raunaq Singh, Mathew T. Marattukalam and Jacob Thomas. In 1975, the company made its Initial public offer of equity shares and its first manufacturing facility was commissioned in Perambra Plant, Thrissur, Kerala, India in 1977, followed by its 2nd plant at Limda, Gujarat, India in 1991. The company acquired Premier Tyres Limited in 1995, which became its 3rd plant at Kochi, Kerala, India. In 2008, it started a new plant at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. A year later in 2009, the company acquired the Netherlands-based tyre maker Vredestein Banden B.V. (VBBV) for an undisclosed sum
The company focused on the production of truck tyres in India and introduced its first truck tyre, Rajdhani in India. The company expanded its operation across India and in 1996, expanded operations outside India by acquiring Dunlop's Africa operations. In 2013, it disposed of the Dunlop brand in Africa along with most of the South African operation in a sale to Sumitomo Rubber Industries of Japan. The very same year, it started its Global R&D Centre, in Enschede, the Netherlands.
In 2015, Apollo Tyres bought Germany's Reifencom tyre distributor for €45.6 million. It shifted its corporate office for Europe region to Amsterdam from Enschede, the Netherlands and opened a Global R&D Centre, Asia in Chennai, India a few months later.
In 2016, the company signed an MoU with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to set up a new factory in the state. On 9 January 2018, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, N Chandrababu Naidu laid the foundation stone for Apollo Tyres' ₹1,800-crore tyre factory in Andhra Pradesh. The plant will come up over a 200-acre site in Chinnapanduru village near Sri City in Tirupati district and produce passenger car radial (PCR) tyres with an initial capacity of 55 lakh (5.5 million) tyres per year and also truck bus radial (TBR) tyres and will serve both domestic and export markets.
The company's second plant in Europe, was inaugurated by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, in April 2017.
From Wikipedia’s article on Apollo Tyres, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5