S Kalyana Ramanathan: Overseas drive

BAKCSTAGE

Ravi Kant is surprised at the timing. Very politely, he refuses to co-operate. "Why now?" he asks. This column could have been done when Tata Motors took over Daewoo's $250-million commercial vehicle business in March 2004.

Or even a year after that, when the country's largest commercial vehicle maker signed an agreement for acquiring a 21 per cent equity stake in Hispano Carrocera SA, a Spanish bus company. The deal was struck with a call option to pick up the balance 79 per cent that would make the Spanish firm a fully-owned subsidiary of Tata Motors. Kant was made the chairman of this company after the Tatas moved in.

The wider Tata Motors casts its net, the more secluded the man at the helm of the company's truck business gets. More recently, Tata Motors commenced talks with Thai Rung Union Car Plc for production of pick-up trucks in Thailand, making it the third global footprint the company would imprint. Kant says that even this is not a reason good enough to put him in the limelight. "It's too early for that," he points out.

A post-graduate in science and a BTech with honours, the 61-year-old Kant joined Tata Motors in February 1999 as vice-president of the commercial vehicle business unit. In July 2000, he was made the executive director. Tata Motors' commercial vehilce sales in 2004-05, including exports was 2,10,000 units, growing at 29 per cent over the previous year.

Exports during the year grew by 80 per cent on top of the 95 per cent growth reported in the year before last. In 2004-05 alone, Tata Motors launched 19 fully built coaches and buses under the Tata Globus and Starbus brands, which is possibly the largest launch in any single year by a commercial vehicle maker in the world. More recently, Tata also made a big-bang entry into the mini-truck segment with the 700cc Tata Ace.

"He is a very media shy. It is quite surprising to find a dynamic person like Kant keeping away from the media. You would rarely find him working closely with industry bodies but is supportive otherwise," says a government official who has great admiration for Kant.

Kant's zeal to guard his privacy is obvious from the fact that neither SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers) nor the Confederation of Indian Industry have a brief resume of him. Kant's office, of course, has it but his secretary will not share it unless the boss says ok. And the boss spends a full 15 minutes on the phone trying to convince this paper why this profile must not be written, at least not now.

He even tries to remember the name of some senior journalists in Business Standard who he thinks can be convinced to stop writing this piece. He sounded a bit confused when told that these journalists used to work in the paper some 10 years back, but not anymore!

For those who know Kant only as the man who is good at selling rugged trucks, Kant's CV carries some surprising elements. He had an equally impressive track record in selling Titan watches, the country's first private sector time-keeper.

A former colleague of Kant prefers to pin-point one trait that has made him what he is today. "He is a great listener. He comes to the table with an open mind, listens patiently, and then, no matter how crude the idea is, he dwells on it for weeks together, polishes it and makes a success out of it," said this former colleague.

The ladder to the top is, as always, not without some back-biting. While crediting him as a man "above board", critics say Kant had been a lucky man.

"He has always been in the right place at the right time, whether it was Titan or LML. In the case of LML the two-wheeler industry was bouncing back to action. So it wouldn't be too accurate to credit Kant with all that had happened right with LML," says an industry observer. The fact that he made little difference in Philips India is cited as a case in point.

With a 60 per cent marketshare in the 3.2 lakh unit domestic commercial vehicle business, the verve and aggression displayed by Tata Motors in expanding its operations worldwide, is a tell-tale sign of the fact that the man at the helm is not resting on his laurels.