India Inc – 50 to 60 – Great moments

As India celebrate its 60th independence day, a look back at the great moments of India Inc in the past decade.

1998 – Made in India:
Tata Motors (formerly Telco) has launched India’s first homegrown car, the Tata Indica. And this helped India to join the exclusive list of countries that designed their own car. That was just the first step for the Tata group to become a leading global palyer in the automobile industry. Sure their ambitious plans to produce Rs 1 lakh car will take them to greater heights.

1999 – Golden quadrilateral:
India’s then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched the ambitious national highway project, Golden quadrilateral connecting the cities Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta and Chennai. Considering the fact that in the first 50 years of independence only 556 kilometers of national highways were four laned , this grand vision by the then Vajpayee Govt. to build more than 5,800 kilometers of express highways was quite a landmark step.

2000 – Millennium Bug:
It is the Y2k bug that fueled the India’s IT revolution and helped the Indian IT companies to get business for many large corporations. As the clock ticked over to enter the new millennium, our professionals worked over time to make sure the business remains unaffected by the date change. But many doubted the life after Y2k for the India’s software companies. However all this doomsday prediction failed, and Indian companies continued to grow at a fast pace despite the double whammy of Y2k loss and dotcom crash. And now it is the rising Indian rupee against the US dollar remains to be a serious concern for the Indian IT majors. Hope this too shall pass.

2001 – Decade without a License:
It was in July 1991, Indian Government abolished the industrial licensing policy. A decade after, the results of this change were for all to see – growing economy, rising set of new class of entrepreneurs like Bharti’s Sunil Mittal, Jet’s Naresh Goyal, Zee’s Subash Chandra and the improved efficiencies in the old business houses who once lobbied against the opening up of economy. Would otherwise the scooter king Bajaj launched a 180 CC Pulsar in 2001?

2002 – Mobile Revolution:
Reliance Infocomm kick started its CDMA operations on the 70th birthday of its founder, late Dhirubabhai Ambani. It’s tariff rates at 40p/min for outgoing calls and free incoming calls spurred other GSM players into action. And in the next year, Reliance Infocomm announced the “Monsoon Hungama” offer, which allows anyone to get a mobile phone with just Rs 501. In their efforts to fulfill the founder Chairman Dhirubhai’s dreams of taking the benefits of mobile telephony to the common man, they played an important role to speed up the mobile revolution in India.

2003 – Fly with a rupee:
Air Deccan, India’s first low cost carrier started its operations in August 2003. When other airlines are busy connecting India’s main cities, Captain Gopinath, Managing Director of Air Deccan chooses small towns like Hubli, Belgaum, Jabalpur, Rajahmundry, Pathankot for their expansion plans. Their vision to make air travel affordable to the common man and to provide low cost connectivity to all towns would in turn help boost the economy in the long run.

2004 – Billion dollar club:
Infosys, the poster child of India’s IT success has become the first listed Indian IT company to cross the $1 billion mark in annual revenues. It was a historic moment for the company and it celebrated the Billion Dollar Day by rewarding its shareholders with bonus shares and dividends and gifting bonuses to the employees. Also the company started Infosys Consulting Inc, a wholly owned US based subsidiary in the same year as the next step in its efforts to fight against the global players in their own turf.

2005 – Empire splits and everybody smiles:
India’s largest private sector company, Reliance Group has been split between the brothers Mukesh and Anil in June 18, ending a seven-month long messy fight in public. And for the millions of Reliance shareholders, it was party time as the split unlocked the hidden value in the group companies. Yes, indeed two Reliance is better than one.

2006 – Mt. 10,000
Sensex touched the magical five digit number 10,000 in the early February. And this boom in the stock market helped Indians to top the Forbes list of Asian billionaires overtaking the Japanese. It took about 16 years for the Sensex, from July 1990 to February 2007 to move from 1000 to 10000. So how long will it take to grow another 10 times to reach 100,000? Not an easy question to answer, but worth spending your time to search for it.

2007 – Global Takeover:
Tata Steel outbids Brazilian rival CSN and acquired the Anglo-Dutch steel major Corus, which is four times its size, in an intense bidding war. A case of a small fish eating the big one, this deal reflects the sign of confident India Inc and its ambitious growth plans.

Wish the next decade will see more of these great moments as we march further towards the economic super power status.