The India Lifestyle reincarnation: GIC, Bain pick up Honda stake in India

While the Marutis start building the Volkswagen and the East looks for ansers in a west dominates model, Hero intends to get out of the ball park even after its promoters buy out the world leader in autos, Honda later this week. As with other auto scoops we tweeted and the myriad phases of silence we observed as Hero Munjals decided to delineate to the press and renegotiate terms with Honda over a year, we also tweeted industry health and international media did come in to propose that the next stage of reforms be not because of RTI but for them. The model inherently flawed may however find big bang sponsors in India’s hinterlands in the East and the slums of the West equanimably.

However, given that paying customers with “kitna deti hai” on their mind have not favored the arcane junk from Fords and GM nor profferred the market to them yet, we may still be looking at a mirage in an exploding auto industry following India’s telecom boom especially for standalone comer uppers from the west 😀 Marketing in the auto industry has however become a hard act to follow for the Pawan Munjals and Brand Ambassador Priyanka Chopra, unless the advertising satraps can get more “vision philosophers” like us at the marketing ends of the companies which unfortunately seems hard to come buy for the industry. I am sure many in the IIM 1% and others pine for a cleanan break from the consulting and the investment banking picking jobs for simple ambitions to launch brands but remain stuck with GM India’s with ambitions of 15000 cars a month and Italian stallions with French comics running around from one JV partner to another. The domestic producers on the other end also remain as always at their wits end with capacity completely utilised and fuel costs to become unbearable even for the forever upwardly mobile young population with greater disposable incomes every day. Somehow, it is the carkmakers’ doing. However for a brief respite in DEcember and a repeat performance over the years still unanalysed for its real positive impact is the 90% “shrinkage” in the trade deficit for the month of December from $11 bln to less than 3 bln

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• Honda to Sell $1.9 Billion Stake in India Venture (businessweek.com)
• Honda quarterly profit drops nearly 40% (theglobeandmail.com)
• Honda’s Profits: The Risk Of A US Recovery (247wallst.com)
• John Satish Kumar’s This Week in India: Hero Honda may get respite but questions remain (marketwatch.com)

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• Bain close to stake buy in India’s Hero Honda-report (reuters.com)