[Business, India] The house of Tatas

Here is a link to an article in Newsweek about the Tatas - one of the biggest business houses in India. Though the unabashed adulatory tone of the article made me squirm a bit, it is a good read nevertheless - especially for people interested in corporate social responsibility.

Here are some interesting excerpts.

"Western bankers and consultants - "little 25-year-old kids" - —told him to get out of the dying steel business."

I wonder where these kids came from :)

"... Tata plans a second act: a $2,000 car. Its market is "the family of four sitting on a two-wheeler, driving on slippery roads in the rain," says Ratan, who figures to sell up to 1 million a year in India. The plan is to distribute the car in kit form to small, low-tech assembly plants in the countryside. Ironically, this echoes a hoary socialist scheme that once forced Tata to hire cottage industries to hammer bodies of wood and sheet metal onto unfinished chassis. The aim this time, however, is less to develop the "small sector" than to replace expensive automation with cheap labor. "We will do something which everyone thought was not possible, just like the Indica," says Ratan. "History will show whether we've been foolish or courageous.""

I have been following this story with great interest for a while now. If they can pull this off without watering it down too much, it could have far reaching impacts not only on the rural market in India but also in other parts of the developing world.