Baba Kalyani

With liberalisation, Indian industry gained international exposure because of which it became imperative for companies to rework their strategies to become globally competitive. ”

We believe in the vision of 'Make in India,' and our proposed joint venture with Rafael is a step in this direction. ”

It's the adventure, the adrenaline-flowing, risk-taking in outdoor activities that attracts me. ”

We can reorient our products and business strategy because we are an agile organisation. ”

Everywhere in the world, whether manufacturing, trade or whatever, it is controlled by one apparatus and one policy perspective. Here we have one prime minister with good intentions, and six ministries running their own empires. This creates problems including the import culture. ”

The Indian business has largely grown on the back of exports. The domestic markets, as far as our Indian business is concerned, actually have contracted because of the contraction in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle space. ”

We passionately set up a programme that we call the Indian gun programme. I challenged Colonel Bhatia, who heads our defence business, that let's build an Indian gun. There's a belief that Indian companies aren't capable of this, and we want to prove them wrong, as we did in components. ”

When I returned from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, my father was running a forging business with a turnover of Rs 3.5 crore. But I had no patience and wanted to grow the business via exports. ”

The most important part of any acquisition is your ability to culturally integrate the people in the companies you acquire and your company. ”

If somebody told me you'd be a one and a half billion dollar company and be the largest in the world, I wouldn't have believed it myself. ”