Pentagon as part of The Sellvinds Group
The Sellvinds Group is a Chennai-based industrial group whose companies have built machine tools and machined fully-finished engine components for India’s leading automotive OEMs across more than seven decades. Sister companies in the group continue to machine fully-finished cylinder heads at scale.
This shared lineage shapes Pentagon’s approach to process definition, vendor selection, gauging, and inspection planning. Operating habits developed across decades of high-volume automotive component manufacturing carry over into Pentagon’s high-mix, medium-volume contract work. Employees? Ex-employees association + managers within Pentagon remain.
Group milestones
Pentagon’s own story unfolds alongside this wider group history. The timeline below traces it from the founder’s early years to today.
Pentagon's heritage
Era 1 · 1954–1965
A machine-tool engineer's formation
1954
Ramanathan Palaniappan graduates top of his class in Mechanical Engineering from Annamalai University and joins Hindustan Machine Tools Ltd. (HMT), Bangalore, as a graduate apprentice.
Late 1950s–early 1960s
While at HMT, he leads delegations to machine-building firms in Europe and signs collaboration agreements on HMT's behalf. One assignment takes him to Renault, France, where he spends six months with a team of fifteen engineers studying the Renault special-purpose machine (SPM) division.
1965
After planning and setting up HMT's Special Purpose Machine Division, he leaves as Deputy General Manager and moves to Madras. He co-founds Productivity Elements Pvt. Ltd. (PROTEL), one of India's first small-scale machine tool companies.
Era 2 · 1970s–1998
Pentagon as a machine-tool builder
1970s
With SRP making gear-cutting tools and PROTEL making broaching machines, a gap remains for tool-resharpening machines. Pentagon Machines and Services Pvt. Ltd. is founded as a custom machine-tool manufacturer, focused on special-purpose machines, gear shaping cutter and broach resharpening machines, and hob inspection equipment.
1970s–1990s
Machines are built for most of India's leading automotive and engineering OEMs, including Ashok Leyland, Bajaj Auto, Escorts, Hindustan Motors, Ind-Suzuki (TVS), Lakshmi Machine Works, Heavy Vehicles Factory, T72 Tank Factory, Greaves Cotton, SRP Tools, Nutrine Confectionery, and Wrigley India.
1990
Natarajan Palaniappan, Ramanathan's younger son, joins after two years of hands-on training at KAREYN Precision Machines, Dehradun, under Ananth Ram Iyer (the first Indian General Manager of HMT), and takes over day-to-day management of the machine-tool business.
Throughout the era
Pentagon builds dedicated machining lines for tractor transmission housings, cylinder heads, cylinder blocks, crankshafts, engine timing cases and covers, alongside lines for the confectionery and packaging industries. Many of these machines are built for group companies manufacturing crankshafts, cylinder heads, and timing cases
Era 1 · 1999–2007
Pivot to contract manufacturing
1999
Pentagon begins contract manufacturing for a multinational hydraulics OEM based in Australia. A clean-room assembly area is commissioned at the Ambattur plant.
2000
First component released to production: a single-spool hydraulic tipping valve. Over the following three years, the first generation of sliding-shift and hot-shift power take-off platforms, gear pumps, and monoblock valves is developed from prototype on customer drawings.
Throughout the period
In-house design and manufacture of jigs, fixtures, and receiver gauges is retained from the machine-tool business and becomes a structural advantage for the contract-manufacturing work.
Era 4 · 2008–2019
A second OEM and scale
2008
Pentagon begins supplying engine balancer assemblies to Simpson & Co. Ltd. The balancer is designed by the prestigious Austrian design firm AVL and developed for production at Pentagon.
2008 onward
43,200 sq ft across two plants in Ambattur, Chennai (20,000 sq ft built-up, balance ready for development). More than 100 product types being exported. ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certifications in progress.
Product range widens
Hot-shift, slide-shift, constant-drive, and rear-mount power take-off families for commercial-vehicle transmissions; high-pressure gear pump platforms; single-spool and two-spool tipping valves, diverter valves, and inline relief valves. Process-capability investments include Makino CNC horizontal machining centres, a Carl Zeiss CNC scanning CMM, nanometer-resolution Carl Zeiss surface roughness testing, and a 315-bar hydraulic test rig built in-house with Siemens PLC control and closed-loop test cycle.
Quality management
Certified to ISO 9001:2015 by Intertek.
Era 5 · 2020–present
Continuity and the next generation
Ongoing
New tipping-valve and diverter-valve families, and heavy-duty slide-shift power take-off platforms for current-generation commercial-vehicle transmissions, continue to release each year.
Next generation joins
Natarajan Palaniappan's sons join the company: Dr Varun Palaniappan (strategy and planning) and Ananth Palaniappan (project engineering).
Today
43,200 sq ft across two plants in Ambattur, Chennai (20,000 sq ft built-up, balance ready for development). Approximately 80 employees. More than 100 product types being exported. ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certifications in progress.
Pentagon is part of The Sellvinds Group – 72 years of manufacturing excellence.
For more on the founder’s career and the people who lead Pentagon today, see Leadership.
