We have never shied away from making investments. Even during downcycles, we never stopped our investments.
The glamorous side is SUVs, but frankly, the tractor side is where we are number one in the world.
Ride-sharing is inevitably going to be 100% electric.
I do believe it is important to be future-ready with a portfolio to be able to deal with however the market evolves. This is better than just forecasting accurately but in having the weapons ready to deal with the uncertainties.
The Rise credo is about accepting no limits, alternative thinking, and driving positive change - the three pillars.
To my mind, the education of children - girl children, specifically - is what really creates an enlightened society. It creates a liberal society.
You want educated women if you are going to have a modern society.
For India's economy to expand as rapidly and yet more sustainably than China's, we need to make our differences into virtues rather than vulnerabilities.
Make in India will not work if we take a conventional linear approach. It has to be a leapfrogging into the future, and India is ideally placed to do this.
One of the demonetization benefits, in some markets like used cars, is that organized, transparent businesses are gaining at the cost of unorganized players.
Being tied down to a pre-med or engineering track would have slotted me into a very narrow group. Being a young filmmaker allowed me to explore many areas of life and many kinds of people.
Sometimes the only kind of innovation comes when you have some solitude; when you step away.
When you sell cars in the U.S., it forces you to be the most competitive.
The age of access being offered by taxi-hailing apps like Uber and Ola is the biggest potential threat to auto industry.
Shared ownership will always mean that you will never sell as many cars as might have been sold without shared mobility... if people are sharing cars, then obviously you are going to sell less cars than would have been sold otherwise. But it doesn't mean that you will have a deceleration in private cars; it just means that the growth will be lower.
I have personally invested in a company created by Rohit Khattar - Cinestaan Film Company. But that's what I do personally.
There's this old Frank Sinatra song: 'If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere'... that song was about New York, but it applies to America. People know that if you make it in America, you can make it anywhere, and that is both in terms of sophistication and customer satisfaction.
If you are planning to save the planet, it will not be Tesla that will do it, since only a finite number of people can afford to buy one, even a $35,000 Model 3.
The government should find regulation to encourage ride-sharing companies. Rather than finding impediments for them, regulate them by all means... create a framework by which ride-sharing companies can survive.
The term 'niche' is no longer pejorative.
In India, we are forced to choose our specialisation very early, whereas in some other countries, this can be done much later in life. While the British have abandoned this approach, we in India seem to be struggling with the old British system of education.
It is processes that are important.
When we heard that America is pulling out of the Paris Agreement, that's unfortunate, but frankly - speaking purely from my competitive juices point of view - we are delighted that somebody's not going to look at these opportunities. They'll be all there for us.
When people consume, they want more. Then they choose the best, and you suddenly get innovation coming in. Now combine that with desperation and people wanting to get a better life: you have a potent combination for innovation.
We don't believe start-ups are the private preserve of only garage start-ups... The corporate garage is going to be the scene of a lot of action.
The story of rural India is a lack of empowerment: perceived impotence. Villagers are being constantly threatened by an authority. The Bolero symbolizes empowerment.
I have fond memories of my kabaddi exploits at Lawrence School. I also enjoyed tennis and swimming.
In a large bureaucracy, you cannot exercise the transformation of any situation without coopting bureaucracy.
You incubate a product in an atmosphere where that product is best incubated. So, for example, we incubated our electric scooter in California. Because it's low-volume manufacturing but high-intelligence, intensive manufacturing, we are starting in Michigan.
Social media is one of the most under-rated business tools, in my opinion. It's an amazing cockpit for any CEO. I can narrate any number of stories how it has helped me to reach out to customers, dealers, protesting workers, and even security guards.
My aspiration is that M&M become one of the most customer-centric organizations in the world. If we focus on understanding our customers, we will be able to develop customer-centric innovations.
If you aren't humble, whatever empathy you claim is false and probably results from some arrogance or the desire to control. But true empathy is rooted in humility and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you.
If I were to put labels on demonetization, it would be transparency and traceability.
My own ambitions were eclectic. My father ran a steel plant, and I was expected to study metallurgy and end up at the steel plant when I finished high school at age 15. Despite my proficiency at science, I decided against it and instead went on to study filmmaking.
XUV is a living proof of the value of MRV. In that sense, the XUV was a wonderful validation. The XUV grew along with MRV. As the institution was built, the product was created.
India's states must compete, not march in lockstep, if India is to develop its own path to sustainable prosperity.
Our credo says that, in the end, we want to drive positive change in the lives of our stakeholders and communities across the world, enabling them to rise.
Leaders don't look behind; they don't look to the side - they look ahead.
Can a person be inspirational? Does a person have global sensibility? That's the hardest thing to find.
Whether in services or in manufacturing, the trick is to stay ahead of the curve. I believe we should not wait to be disrupted - we should become disruptors ourselves.
We see ourselves as being people who want to take India to the world; we see ourselves as being aggressive, assuming risk.
I call America our emerging market. They find it very amusing when I said that.
Education is like the pooja ghar for us. We are never going to become a for-profit player in education. It will be akin to selling the pooja ghar.
Life has an interesting way of teaching even the most powerful people that joy from wealth is fleeting at best.
A lot of people who can afford a vehicle are deciding against owning one. They just need access to transport. So, our job is to offer wider choices to consumers with more innovative models.
To me, every decision needn't be a 'big-bang' reform but a signal of proactive decision-making and removal of red tape and bureaucracy.
To me, Scorpio was a big bet and a quantum leap in the kind of sophistication of our products. People forget that, apart from the Bolero and the Armada, until the nineties we never made hard-top vehicles.
Benchmarking is an ongoing exercise in any company that aspires for leadership.
We're going to be selling our product to the American consumer. We want to have Americans who understand American consumers.
