Founded in 1906 by T. Arumugam Mudaliar in Chintadripet, a locality in the city of Chennai (Madras at the time) in India, the Swadesi Type Foundry was a pioneer in Telugu, Kannada and Tamil types among 15 other scripts, supplying type to countries all over the world. Universal Thirst has a special connection with this foundry, having borrowed our name from this 1937 specimen. In it, the foundry director expressed his concern about the lack of well-designed font families, saying there was a “universal thirst” for high quality Indian and Latin typefaces that could be combined in a harmonious way. The specimen introduced the new Telugu series, which was named after the founder. It was revolutionarily designed with the point system ranging from 72 to 10 pt sizes. UT is currently in talks with the STF family to learn more about its history and the heritage of type.