India's Car Industry
Thank you. It's a great pleasure and a great privilege to be here this evening. A little overwhelming, if I might say so. And I'm overwhelmed.
Let me just say that on all the years in the varying capacities that I've tried to work in India, the most fascinating period of time that I've had is in the automotive area. The automobile business is truly an emotive and a tremendously rewarding, business.
It has more excitement than any other business I've been involved in, and the greatest pleasure I've had is trying to do something that everybody says could not be done. I'll just share perhaps a moment in time which I will always cherish. I decided that India could produce its own car.
Everybody, my friends overseas in the automobile business said that this couldn't be done. We had to go through a collaboration to get know-how, get technology. But we undertook to produce this car.
You saw images of it in the video. It was called the Indica, and we produced it in India totally of Indian content. As we got close to putting it in the market, my friends in India somewhat distanced themselves from me, otherwise known as distancing yourself from failure.
And when the car came out, I suddenly felt that I didn't have a friend in the world and that all the warnings that people had given me were probably going to come true. But the car did come out. It did earn a twenty percent market share, and we showed that we could do something.
Throughout the time I've been involved in business, there hasn't been anything that has equaled the excitement, the reward, and the exhilaration that the car industry has provided and can provide. It gives, as has been said earlier, an opportunity to test new technologies, new building methods. But above all, it has helped in the transformation of the Indian economy to a mobile economy.
And a great deal of what has happened in India has happened right here in Detroit. The world owes a great deal to the United States for doing what it did to get the car industry to be taken for granted the rest of the world as it has over the years. It's a great pleasure to be involved in the industry and a very humbling recognition to receive the award that's been bestowed today.
I owe this to my colleagues in the company who have transformed this business, and I would like to thank the Automotive, News Today who put together this award and to say how much I cherish the being included in the Hall of Fame. Thank you so much.
