The Contrarian Mr Khattar

Heads of car companies are known by the models they launch. Khattar launched several. Most notably, the Swift and Dzire, remade Maruti into their own image as modern, peppy, and cheery little cars

Maruti’s initial public offering had everything going against it. It came in 2003, at a time when the Sensex had fallen to 3,300, more than 30 per cent below the highs of three years ago. The company’s historic financial loss of 2000-01 was still fresh in memory. The needle between the two primary shareholders, the Government of Ondia and Japan’s Suzuki, was still sharp, though neither had broken the tenuous truce reached a few years ago. Maruti’s sales had been declining for three years. Incredible as it would seem now, the ‘expert’ view was that big cars were the future