Nokia once sold toilet paper, Sony made cookers: Anand Mahindra shares ‘fascinating’ list

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra

It’s almost hard to believe that Nokia, a company today famous for consumer electronics, once sold toilet paper. Or that Lego, almost synonymous with plastic building blocks, started off with wooden toy ducks. It’s impossible to hear “Colgate” and not immediately think of toothpaste, but the company once made candles. And Toyota? Today it might be one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, but Toyota was founded to manufacture and sell automatic looms.

These and many such similar examples of famous companies and their first products were shared on Twitter by Anand Mahindra this morning. For the chairman of Mahindra Group, the list offered an important lesson: Adapt and grow.

“A fascinating list that shows how entrepreneurs are flexible and ‘pivot’ when opportunity arises,” wrote Anand Mahindra, 67, as he re-posted the list of “first products” on Twitter. The industrialist added that the list offered a valuable lesson for our personal lives: “Don’t be afraid of change. You don’t have to stay wedded to what you originally started out to do. Evolution is life!”

A fascinating list that shows how entrepreneurs are flexible & ‘pivot’ when opportunity arises. But it provides a great lesson even for our personal lives: Don’t be afraid of change. You don’t have to stay wedded to what you originally started out to do. Evolution is life! https://t.co/nlWSuFoGsu

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) September 16, 2022

One person asked what Mahindra’s first product was. The company, founded in pre-partition India, started with steel trading before moving to automobile manufacturing shortly afterwards.

In 1945 started with Steel Trading later in the year 1948 they started manufacturing of Willys Jeep.

— Dinesh kandregula (@itsdineshkv) September 16, 2022

Anand Mahindra is an active Twitter user with 9.7 million followers on the platform. His posts range from funny to thoughtful, and he often re-posts things that catch his attention. Yesterday, Mahindra had shared “surreal” photos of the Chenab Railway Bridge while praising the engineers responsible for its construction.