In 1949, Govindachari returned to India and in January the next year, he joined Presidency College as an additional professor at the department of chemistry. He served the institution for the next thirteen years during which period, he became a professor in 1952 and the principal of the college in 1961. He superannuated from service in 1962, and after a year, he joined the Research Center of Ciba-Geigy in Mumbai in 1963 as its director. His association with the center continued till 1975 when he returned to Chennai to serve as a consultant to Central Leather Research Institute and after two years, Amrutanjan, a pharmaceutical company, assigned him the responsibility of setting up an R&D facility for them in Chennai. He headed the facility since its inception in 1977 till 1986 when the Science Foundation of Southern Petrochemical Industries Corporation entrusted him the responsibility of establishing a research centre for them. He set up the Centre for Agrochemical Research in 1987 and held its directorship till his last.
