India's tractor boys are preparing for take-off

For the past year and a half, the Indian business capital of Mumbai has been awash with tales of corruption, slumping growth and the fall from grace of some of the country's best-known tycoons.
But the newly minted chairman of Mahindra Group, one of India's biggest industrial houses, has little time for doom-mongering. A relentless optimist, he admits that India's dramatic boom of the mid 2000s - when GDP growth soared to more than 8 per cent - was always overhyped. But now that it has moderated - to about 6 per cent - there is no reason to question the nation's overall growth story.
"When people raise expectations too high, it is probably unjustified," said Mr Mahindra, 57, who boasts more than half a million followers on Twitter and has made no secret of his wish to turn the group into a global powerhouse. "We should never have been put on a pedestal - but we shouldn't be in the trash can now either."
There are few people better placed to measure India's economic pulse. From the group's wood-panelled executive suite on the 6th floor of Mahindra Towers, Mahindra oversees an empire with sales of US$15 billion. Employing 144,000 people and spanning 18 different industries, Mahindra makes everything from steel to cars, from artillery guns to software and farm equipment. Its staff also sell insurance, financial services, package holidays and property.
He is also looking to branch out into new industries such as aviation, with the ambition of turning Mahindra into India's first domestic aircraft maker. He has put his money where his mouth is. The group has invested US$100 million in a new aerospace factory in Bangalore and has bought Gipps Aero, an Australian aircraft manufacturer whose technology is being used as a platform for the group's growth plans.
Mahindra Aerospace, one of ten main-group businesses, is already supplying components to established players and is working on designs for new ten-seater and 18-seater aircraft, which would be sufficiently robust to land on rural airstrips in remote parts of the country.
15/09/12 Robin Pagnamenta/The Australian

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2012, New Sep 2012