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This is very sad news. He was truly the Colossus of the Indian automobile industry and Indian industrialisation. He set up what came to be respected all over the world. Very frank, brutally honest, he had a great sense of humour and mischief. Sometimes, almost like a mischievous child, he was so intelligent and sharp. At the same time, he was a great leader, leader of people, leader of men and universally commanded respect. He was bold and outspoken. It is a great loss to me, to the automotive industry, but I would say India as well.
He was a giant. He really was one of the pillars of the Indian automobile industry — like Moolgaokar of Tata, Keshub Mahindra of Mahindra Group, Brijmohan Munjal (Hero Group), Krishnamurthy of Maruti and H P Nanda (Escorts Group). He goes in that galaxy in the sky among the celestial stars of the Indian automotive industry.
With the ‘Hamara Bajaj’ tagline, he tried that you just can’t beat a Bajaj and established leadership and quality at a time when you had a closed market and a waiting list. He could have made a poor quality product and got away with it, but he never compromised. He will never compromise on his principles, will never compromise on quality and always stood for very high integrity in business. At a time when Indian business was known for notoriety for many things, nobody could raise a little finger or point a little finger at him.
Regarding liberalisation, actually, he was part of the Bombay Club. There also, he was quite open about it. He said India is not ready and you cannot create a playing field that is tilted against Indians. Liberalisation was done in a hurry and it was done when India was in trouble economically and a lot of those rules were actually tilted against Indians. He was the one who spoke out and brought back the balance.
I have seen him at various stages in the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He was practically CII for a long time. If you talk about CII, you talk about Rahul Bajaj and Tarun Das. He came to represent CII almost, in the founding of the industry body and in the growth of CII, he had a very instrumental role to play. Even World Economic Forum. He was one of the founding pillars of the World Economic Forum, which shows that his presence and influence was far beyond India. He has also done his succession planning also well, which speaks of his farsightedness and vision.
One thing I would like to say is that at no point in time did our business rivalry or some of the issues that we had between our companies came in way of him giving me a smile and putting his arm on my shoulder and saying “Hello Venu, we have no problems”. He never mixed personal relationships with whatever happened in the business.
(As told to Shine Jacob)
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The writer is chairman, TVS Motor
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