It is imperative for us to protect the flora and fauna around us.
2012 was a good year for the Mahindra Group, as we moved ahead by venturing into new geographies and businesses.
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.
Businesses look for stability; they look for direction.
Branding in electric mobility is critical, but I think what Tesla has also demonstrated is that you can build new brands.
It is such an uncertain universe out there that you have to create what I call 'real' options and develop capabilities that will enable you to deal with an environment that will change anyway.
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.
India's states must compete, not march in lockstep, if India is to develop its own path to sustainable prosperity.
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.
The best way to propel the economy may be to encourage different parts of the country to go their own way.
India's sprawling subcontinent can never become a plus-size Singapore. But perhaps we can weave together an urban web that is the equivalent of a thousand Singapores.
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.
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.
When you sell cars in the U.S., it forces you to be the most competitive.
I have no problem with money coming in and spawning competition. I am honest enough to admit that Mahindra & Mahindra would not have been going to the IITs and doing research if there was no competition.
You have to seed internal disruptors. You need sources of internal disruption. They don't guarantee your survival, but you have got to try.
Old definitions of segments are going to get blurred. Once you defined cars by horsepower, engines. That has changed.
You cannot mean everything to all segments of the markets. You cannot have a brand straddling too many meanings.
The term 'niche' is no longer pejorative.
Mahindra's brand strategy is about niches across areas of mobility.
Benchmarking is an ongoing exercise in any company that aspires for leadership.
President Donald Trump's policies are not global but inward-looking.
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.
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.
The moment I say I'm going into scooters, they say, 'You're crazy.' Six months later, when BMW comes out with an electric scooter, it's fine. But when Anand does it, because he's some small guy in India, it's not fine.
I love the blues, but I love a lot of music.
I have personally invested in a company created by Rohit Khattar - Cinestaan Film Company. But that's what I do personally.
For too many years, we, as a country, have suffered from a poverty of aspiration.
My mother was a writer. She acted in one film before she decided that Bollywood wasn't good enough for her. My two sisters and I probably learned from her how to get under other people's skin. In contrast, my father was a simple man despite his success at business. He was a people person, and I think that's what led him to join politics.
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.
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.
I think a CEO lives or dies in whether he's been able to hold on to elements of culture that are needed in the company.
The most important thing that I tell myself is that no matter where I go in this journey, the humility is what's gonna keep me honest and real. And perhaps a better manager.
If I were to put labels on demonetization, it would be transparency and traceability.
One of the demonetization benefits, in some markets like used cars, is that organized, transparent businesses are gaining at the cost of unorganized players.
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.
I am not a lonely person. I am happily married and not looking for companions on social media.
We often say that the M&M Group's destiny is inextricably linked with India's. Both were born around the same time: India in 1947, M&M in 1945. The group has experienced the same vicissitudes that the Indian economy has.
The more I learn about industry structures, the more I feel that once a company has paid the fee, in a manner of speaking, to enter a sector, it becomes even harder to stay afloat.
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.
Nothing is 'another day at the office.'
We see ourselves as being people who want to take India to the world; we see ourselves as being aggressive, assuming risk.
I have fond memories of my kabaddi exploits at Lawrence School. I also enjoyed tennis and swimming.
There is a growing interest in team ownership and promoting sports beyond cricket in India. I always felt it is important to encourage other sports, especially those that bring communities together and promote active lifestyles to Indian youth.
For any sport to be sustainable, it cannot survive on government or corporate grants alone. The sporting ecosystem needs more investments from businesses, and businesses need to see the returns from their investment in sport. Cricket has achieved that distinction, but I feel a country of a billion-plus people cannot remain captive to one sport.
The Indian government is extraordinarily large, and it is difficult to try and believe that one leader can make all the change. This is a federal system.
In a large bureaucracy, you cannot exercise the transformation of any situation without coopting bureaucracy.
We have never shied away from making investments. Even during downcycles, we never stopped our investments.
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.