How can Indian Manufacturers accelerate globalisation strategies?

With India being one of the fastest growing markets in the world, playing a prominent role in the world economy, the ‘common sense view’ is that there is ample opportunity to capture in this market,the Indian government has an important role to play in providing the right infrastructure for the manufacturers to thrive, including a receptive political environment, Indian manufacturers must also accelerate their globalisation strategies. Otherwise, manufacturing in India will marginalize towards being predominantly under the umbrella of foreign brands leveraging India’s cost base. India deserves better.

Other than being able to immediately expand their product portfolio in the home market and, thus, buying time in staying relevant, there seems to be little gain from these partnerships in becoming global operations. It is worth highlighting that Tata Motors took a different approach and focused on acquiring R&D capability outside India, and this was done well before the Jaguar and Land Rover acquisitions. Hence, as part of going global, foreign acquisitions are also a sound strategy. Yet, the funding needs are considerable as the recent acquisitions by Bharat Forge, Tata Motors and Tata Steel have demonstrated, leave alone the risk, as in many cases the (to be) acquired companies are bigger than the acquiring ones.