In October 1939, when he was preparing to depart for Hong Kong from San Francisco, Walchand Hirachand, one of India’s legendary nationalist industrialists, had no plans to start an aircraft manufacturing factory in India. He was concerned only with the outcome of meetings he had held over the past three months with various American car makers, seeking technical cooperation for setting up an automobile factory in Bombay.
Waiting to board Pan American Airways’ long-distance seaplane, the China Clipper, Walchand bought nearly every newspaper at the stall for the long journey ahead. As if designed to catch the attention of this adventurous Indian industrialist, one featured an interview with American engineer William D. Pawley, President of Inter-Continent Corporation of New York and Director of Harlow Aircraft Manufacturing Company. Pawley’s remark that building an aircraft factory in China or India was hardly an impossible task planted the seed of a new dream in Walchand’s mind.