Bharat Rakshak

The tractor maker who has John Deere on the run.

Anand Mahindra was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year when Robert Lane, chairman of U.S. farm equipment concern Deere & Co., approached him.

"I've been to your dealerships and seen all your manuals," he told Mr. Mahindra, whose Mumbai-based Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. has been taking on the maker of John Deere tractors in the U.S. market.

Well, replied Mr. Mahindra with a laugh, "that's good news and bad news."

The bad news is that the world's biggest tractor maker has put Mahindra & Mahindra in its sights. The good news, both for Mr. Mahindra and India, is that a behemoth like John Deere is worried enough to bother.

Indian manufacturers have never troubled the sleep of executives in the rich world. India is well known for its outsourcing and information technology skills - even, more recently, for the global shopping sprees of its acquisitive billionaires - but its manufacturers are minnows beside the sharks of China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Gradually, that has begun to change.

India's manufacturing industry grew at an annual rate of 9 per cent over the past four years, on pace with its booming economy. Boston Consulting Group predicts that India will be the 11th-biggest global manufacturer by 2015 and the seventh-biggest by 2025, up from 14th in 2005.

John Deere also has India, the largest market in number of units sold and/or second largest in dollar terms, in its cross hair...fighting M&M on its own turf. JD has state-of-the-art manufacturing and development centers in Magarpatta City, Pune. It also probably has dealer in every district of India. JD tractors can be seen in remote parts of the country. Market share is still low around ~3.5% compared to M&M's 40%. This will probably one of the few examples where American company is directly competing as minnows with well-established Indian company in India. Interesting times ahead.

The good news is JD sources more than 95% of the parts,including engine castings and transmission, for its tractors from India itself. Indian suppliers are also used for export maal.

gashish wrote:John Deere also has India, the largest market in number of units sold and/or second largest in dollar terms, in its cross hair...fighting M&M on its own turf. JD has state-of-the-art manufacturing and development centers in Magarpatta City, Pune. It also probably has dealer in every district of India. JD tractors can be seen in remote parts of the country. Market share is still low around ~3.5% compared to M&M's 40%. This will probably one of the few examples where American company is directly competing as minnows with well-established Indian company in India. Interesting times ahead.

The good news is JD sources more than 95% of the parts,including engine castings and transmission, for its tractors from India itself. Indian suppliers are also used for export maal.

When did they penetrate all the districts in India. Is it after 2004 or before that.

Acharayjee...


Here is the link to JD journal:
JD in India..a little dated from 2001.

They had 70 dealerships in 2001 and the aim was to ramp it upto 200. Looking at this map, now they seem to have presence all over india..

whats special about 2004?

they first came in as joint venture with L&T in 1999 and made impressive progress,which appears linear to me, in less than a decade.

selling products to rural india by a foreign company is a very difficult task...they seem to have learnt a trick or two from HLL(unilever)...Adverts of JD tractors can be now be seen painted on walls of village homes and water tanks.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... columnists

[quote]Auto maker Anand Mahindra, who competed against Tata for Land Rover and Jaguar, calls the Nano “a shot that was heard around the world.â€

Vipul wrote:The tractor maker who has John Deere on the run.

Anand Mahindra was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year when Robert Lane, chairman of U.S. farm equipment concern Deere & Co., approached him.

"I've been to your dealerships and seen all your manuals," he told Mr. Mahindra, whose Mumbai-based Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. has been taking on the maker of John Deere tractors in the U.S. market.

Well, replied Mr. Mahindra with a laugh, "that's good news and bad news."

The bad news is that the world's biggest tractor maker has put Mahindra & Mahindra in its sights. The good news, both for Mr. Mahindra and India, is that a behemoth like John Deere is worried enough to bother.

Indian manufacturers have never troubled the sleep of executives in the rich world. India is well known for its outsourcing and information technology skills - even, more recently, for the global shopping sprees of its acquisitive billionaires - but its manufacturers are minnows beside the sharks of China, South Korea and Taiwan.

Gradually, that has begun to change.

India's manufacturing industry grew at an annual rate of 9 per cent over the past four years, on pace with its booming economy. Boston Consulting Group predicts that India will be the 11th-biggest global manufacturer by 2015 and the seventh-biggest by 2025, up from 14th in 2005.

This is not a news for people who works for JD. My friend have seen JD engineers visiting M&M dealers, checking their manuals as far back as 2000. He used to work as consultant at their corporate HQ (moline,IL).

Truth be told, felling western (& Jap) manufacturing giants while gratifying is perhaps not *that* challenging anymore. Its no secret that they've slowly been losing their manufg edge in low and mid tech products for years now to nibler Asian rivals. (High tech is another story, though).

The real battle, IMHO, is between desi and far east firms (PRC, SoKo, ASEAN) in the third mkts (West, Africa, LatAm etc).

If we can beat the chinis at cost (Like the Nano did) and the goras in design (again, like the nano did), then we've achieved a truly formidable feat, IMHO.

There's no reason to believe we'll lose. So far, using acquisitions, forex hedging, export mkts and the like, desi firms have just started on this journey. May the best model win.

Behind the rise of India's billionaires.

In the title bout of 21st century business – India versus China – China is way ahead on points. With vastly higher exports, energy production, foreign investment and infrastructure spending, it has a weight advantage India cannot hope to match. But India has one thing in its favour: the genius of its business leaders. Smart, ambitious, forward-looking, eager to learn, they are India's potential knockout punch.

Forbes reported recently that, for the first time, India has more billionaires than Japan, the usual Asian leader in the magazine's annual list. India has 53, up from 34 the year before. Four Indian billionaires are on the Top 10 list of the world's richest people, more than any other country can claim.

That's an extraordinary fact all on its own. India was an economic washout just a generation ago, its industries and businesses stifled by decades of government overregulation. Even today, India is a poor country where more than 300 million people live on less than a dollar a day. Yet, at the top end, Indians are accumulating wealth at a pace that puts even the Japanese in the 1980s or the Chinese in the 1990s to shame. They aren't shy about it either. The country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, bought his wife, Neeta, a $60-million (U.S.) Airbus airliner for her 44th birthday, complete with satellite-TV and custom-fitted office.

What's most impressive about India's new tycoons isn't their sudden wealth, though. It's the way they are taking their companies, and in the process their country, forward. The companies they are building are not just big, bold and brawny in the Chinese model, but smart, nimble and surprisingly modern.

I was lucky enough to talk to some of them during a recent visit to India to write the series of profiles published in this section last week (see Made in India at http://www.reportonbusiness.com/managing). With the openness, charm and eloquence that is characteristic of Indians, each sketched out his vision of the future. Consider just two of them.

Ratan Tata, father of the world's cheapest car, the Nano, is taking his company international. One of India's oldest business houses, Tata Group has hit the headlines with the big-money acquisitions of Tetley Tea, the Anglo-Dutch steel company Corus and the high-end auto brands Jaguar and Land Rover.

Mr. Tata doesn't like to call his company “global,â€

Why only TATA and WIpro covered in a UK (European) publication.

Why not other business

deleted ..

More stories of unknown desi firms suddenly finding the right environment, capital, skills and nerve to expand tremendously and profitably and catapult into global top x positions from virtually nowhere. All hail sarkar's benign neglect!

A nation truly on the march.

Sanmar’s big bang in the global foundry space

[quote]Soon Sanmar Group will be among the top 10 foundries in the world (top three in the case of steel casting capacity) and ranked 20th in terms of global PVC capacity (second in India after Reliance Industries). By 2010-11, its revenues are expected to touch Rs 7,000 crore, with 45 per cent of it coming from outside India. The group, it appears, is in a hurry to make up for the time lost.

“Our strength has always been the bottom line,â€

Acharya wrote:Why only TATA and WIpro covered in a UK (European) publication.

Why not other business

TATAs are a favorite of the Economist magazine. For some reason Reliance is not mentioned much in it's writings. Maybe because Reliance has opted not to expand much outside India.

Paul wrote:

Acharya wrote:Why only TATA and WIpro covered in a UK (European) publication.

Why not other business

TATAs are a favorite of the Economist magazine. For some reason Reliance is not mentioned much in it's writings. Maybe because Reliance has opted not to expand much outside India.

Reliance is connected to US and TATA is connected to UK

Figure it out

Acharya,

You're overdoing it. TATA has as much US connections.

Anabhaya wrote: TATA has as much US connections.

only recntly after 2000

I am talking about amount of Business increased after 2000 - You see Tetley machines in all deli now.

Not sure what is meant by connections, but Ratan Tata went to Cornell IIRC...

Not to mention:

http://www.tata.com/0_tata_worldwide/america/index.htm

All hail India's booming consumption story

Feel good piece in India Today. Worth a scan, IMHO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAK2OKq5EvA

some farmers in Meghalaya take to growing strawberries and make good
profits compared to potatoes and cauliflowers.

Vipul wrote:Mumbai: World's 7th largest billionaire city.

And with the biggest slum

No no that distinction belongs to karachi now. Orangi town I believe.

Acharya wrote:

Vipul wrote:Mumbai: World's 7th largest billionaire city.

And with the biggest slum

Glass is half full or half empty?
As for the Slum, in it place by 2014 we willl be seeing 7.5 Million sq feets of Prime (Steel and Glass chromed) Real estate.
This location is near the Bandra Kurla CBD and the tenders for its development will be given by June 15th.

vsudhir wrote:All hail India's booming consumption story

Feel good piece in India Today. Worth a scan, IMHO.

VSudhir - Thanks for posting the article. A simple request - for the future could you please post the link to the first page of the article (as opposed to the last page)? Thanks very much.

Regards,
Jimmy

Vasundra Raje in Rajasthan copying Modi for improving electricity work.

Power to People of Rajasthan

Facing Assembly elections in November this year, Raje took the gutsy but politically suicidal step of cutting off power to 1,000 villages in four districts of Bharatpur division, an area from where she has a strong support base.

Of the 8,475 feeders in the state, 5,571 have been renovated, which means 22,280 villages are getting minimum 20 hours of residential supply every day and four-six hours of agricultural supply.

As a result, the state now has 99 per cent of power bills being paid. Tamper-proof meters have been installed outside homes, in the open. Special vigilance posts have been set up to book the culprits. Over a thousand were arrested before the illegal activity came to a stop.

“We will be a power surplus state by next year,â€

India to become 8th wealthiest place by 2017: Barclays.

India with its increasing number of millionaires is projected to be in the 8th position among the world’s top 10 wealth centres by 2017, says a report by banking giant Barclays.

The report further says that emerging Markets like India, China and Russia are fast catching up with the rich countries in terms of their wealth.

“Over the coming decade, the gap in wealth between the world’s most developed countries and the leading emerging Markets will continue to narrow with many new millionaires being created in India, China, Russia and other countries which are undergoing rapid development,â€

http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/08/stories ... 221000.htm
[quote]

Taste for ‘good life’

The younger generation — young professionals with their allegedly five-digit incomes, cosmopolitan attitude and a taste for “good lifeâ€

Sanjay M wrote:http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/b ... vs_na.html

It looks like a post that needs to be in the psy-ops.

x-post frm the power thread.

How to reform power & irrigation

Swaminathan A Aiyar in TOI.

Theis Jyotigram experiment is Guj has been a resounding success. Only wish it were as widely disseminated and celebrated. Creates an incentive to replicate the success for other states as well.

Dhimmedia wont help if it helps burnish Gujrat image. We know why, no need to go there. These nuggets of info coming to us from these knowledgeble commentators having more ocntrol over their opinion columns than the avg journo, need wider and deeper dissemination, then.

Let's do our bit and spread the word, folks.

India Inc.wakes up to nanotechnology

Tata Steel gives Jharkhand's tribals reason to smile

Ensoi.

ADAG's Hollywood deal signals bigger role for India.

MUMBAI: The Anil Ambani-led group's deals with eight Hollywood production houses gives credence to the prediction of American billionaire investor George Soros that India will play "a crucial role" in the global entertainment and media industry in the coming years.

Soros made this remark while investing $100 million in Reliance BIG Entertainment last year.

The announcement at Cannes on Sunday also came a week after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) announced the appointment of Bedi A Singh, an Indian based in the USA, as president, finance and administration and chief financial officer of MGM.

Singh, until recently the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Gemster-TV Guide International, will report directly to Harry E Sloan, chairman and CEO of MGM.

Though these two incidents are unrelated, they corroborate the fact that the Indian presence in Hollywood is gradually increasing and the Reliance BIG Entertainment's deals, by far the biggest by an Indian (billionaire Anil Ambani), has given the rising trend a big boost.

The company's first major media investment abroad, it will enhance its global presence and will indirectly provide India's emerging image of an economic powerhouse an extra sheen.

"It's a big deal. I think, every Indian should feel proud that an Indian company has made such an empathic inroad into Hollywood. Though it is essentially a business deal, it will improve India's image abroad," Manmohan Shetty, the erstwhile CEO of Reliance-Adlabs, told reporters.

UTV is another Indian company which has now made its presence felt in Hollywood. Its co-production venture with 20th Century Fox, "The Happening," directed by Manoj Night Shyamalan. Is due for release next month.

Till recently, it was the only Indian company to have projects with major Hollywood studios like Walt Disney (which has bought 32.10 percent stake, valued $230 million, in the company) and a tie-up deal with Will Smith's production house, Overbrooks, to produce two movies, one a live-action and the animation.

It has also announced its first independent Hollywood venture "Ex-terminators"

UTV admits that Reliance BIG Entertainment's Hollywood deal is spectacular.

"I personally have nothing to comment on the deal because I do not know the details. But, from what appears in the newspapers, it seems a good business deal, good for the company," remarked Siddharth Roy Kapoor, CEO of UTV Motion Pictures.

Bollywood's independent producers and production houses have also reacted positively to the Reliance BIG Entetainment's Hollywood deal.

"But I do not see how this particular deal will help Bollywood as Reliance BIG Entertainment will invest in Hollywood. Yes, I agree, it will improve India's image abroad," Shyam Shroff, of India's renowned distribution firm, Shringar Films, which also runs the Fame multiplex chain, told reporters.

After having sealed its partnership deals with eight major studios and its co-financing arrangement with a few independent production houses of such stars as Nicholas Cage, Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey, Reliance BIG Entertainment has emerged truly as a fully integrated movie company with stakes in every department of film trade - production, distribution, exhibition, and post-production.

About 200 exhibition outlets that Reliance BIG Entertainment has bought over in cities across North America, not to speak of its properties in India, will give the company an edge to market its movie products and retain its hold over them.

For Reliance BIG Entertainment, the Hollywood deal is only a first step towards making big strides in the global entertainment domain as a "new generation media company," as Reliance ADA Group describes it.

Small time waiter cracks Civil Services

Vellore, May 22: Demonstrating how perseverance pays, a one-time waiter at a local restaurant in Tamil Nadu has cleared the prestigious Indian Administrative Exams in his seventh attempt!

Born to a humble couple of Krishnan and Kalavati in Vinnamangalam, a tiny village in the State's Vellore District, Jayaganesh had to work at a cinema hall's cafeteria and later on at an eatery shop in Chennai as waiter.

He needed money to pursue his long cherished dream of becoming an Indian Administraitve Service Officer.

Having had his initial education at the native village, Jayaganesh went on to Vellore city to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Later, he joined a small company for some time in Bangalore (Karnataka) as an engineer, the unfulfilled dream for the coveted job haunted Jayaganesh every night. He returned to his native place and proceeded to Chennai to pursue his studies for the civil services.

Simultaneously, he took up a job as a waiter in the cafeteria at Satyam Complex to arrange for his expenses.He would to draw 3,000 rupees as a monthly salary for working at the Satyam cinemas cafeteria.

Jayaganesh used to study during the spare time when there were not many customers in the cafeteria or it was time for a movie show.

Not getting adequate time to study, he took up another job at a small restaurant near the theatre as a waiter. There he would study after the working hours. For accommodation, he stayed with his friends for three years in Chennai.

The hard work ultimately paid, as Jayaganesh's cleared his exams and secured 156th rank in the Union Public Service Commission exams. Today, he dedicates his success to his parents and friends.

"Throughout my studies, I had full confidence in myself and hence worked with consistence. Despite failing every time, I tried to work upon my mistakes in studies. It was my self-belief and hard work that enabled me pass this exam," said the jubilant Jayaganesh.

Jayaganesh is now looking forward to join the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Public Administration for his training at Mussourie in August.

Bureau Report

deleted OT.

Deleted

Your're right kakkaji.

Its more a story of an Indian National on the march than that of the Indian nation on the march.

Deleted the original reference, kindly edit your post also to efface out the kuffr details. TIA.

Bollywood dawn in Hollywood.

Longer Hollywood films with music, dance(running around the trees ), drama and even melodrama may become the next fad with Indian corporate houses financing top Los Angeles-based studios.

Even as Mumbai-based UTV is set to unveil its first co-production with 20th Century Fox, "The Happening" directed by Manoj Night Shyamalam who is of Indian descent, the much-publicised mega deal between Reliance Big Entertainment and eight Hollywood production studios has signalled the beginning of a new era in global entertainment.

UTV was till recently sailing in uncharted waters. It was the only Indian company to have projects with major Hollywood studios like Walt Disney.

According to Siddharth Roy Kapoor, CEO of UTV Motion Pictures, the company has also announced its first independent Hollywood venture "Ex-Terminators" and is producing two movies with Will Smith's production house, Overbrooks.

But Reliance Big Entertainment's investments in companies owned by A-list Hollywood stars takes the relationship to an entirely new level. And the $1 billion injection comes at a time when Hollywood studios are facing a severe cash crunch.

The companies that have joined hands with Big Entertainment include Nicolas Cage's Saturn Productions, Jim Carrey's JC 23 Entertainment, Sean Clooney's Smokehouse Productions, Tom Hanks's Playtone Productions and Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment.

Most trade analysts agree it's time Hollywood studios adapt to local tastes if they want to grow further. The investments by Indian firms are likely to drive that.

India-born international filmmaker Shekhar Kapur's prediction that global entertainment consumption patterns are pointing towards the day when "Spiderman" takes off his mask and reveals an Indian face seem closer now than ever before .

Amit Khanna, Reliance's chairman, says: "Bollywood is somehow personified by song and dance and Hollywood by sex and violence, and there is this idea that neither can meet. We don't believe this is true."

It is hoped that as many as 30 scripts will be developed under the deal, of which about 10 would go into production.

"The value of this slate of films will be worth a billion dollars. The films will be made in the next two years under different genres and will have a range of budgets," Khanna says.

At the same time, trade observers are upbeat about Hollywood's continued influx into Bollywood. According to news reports, approximately Rs.4 billion from various Hollywood studios are committed to Indian film projects.