The company had already proved itself to be an outlier by not taking
on an equity partner who would feed it technology. Each of its rivals
had one. Hero and Kinetic had Honda, TVS had Suzuki, Escorts had Yamaha
and LML had Piaggio. Bajaj had Kawasaki, but only as a technology
supplier, with no equity. “Not having an equity partner that
provided the technology, such as Honda for Hero, gave us the opportunity
to learn. What we got was technical drawings from Kawasaki. The
process, the why and the how, and the manufacturing were not transferred
completely from Kawasaki. We made mistakes, but we learned,” says Joe…. By the turn of the century, Bajaj began to become self-reliant in
technology. The last motorcycle it built with Kawasaki’s technology was
the Eliminator in 1999.…The well wishers of Indian manufacturing groaned in unison when a strike
broke out on June 25 at Bajaj Auto’s Chakan plant, near Pune. It would
only make the slowdown worse. But they had not reckoned with Rajiv
Bajaj.
…After
40 days, Bajaj took the unusual step of giving the workers a week to
end the strike. Else, he would shift most of the production out of
Chakan to his other plants in Aurangabad and Pant Nagar. The strike
ended a day after the deadline. Union leaders tried to save face with
the pretexts of the slowdown and the festival season.“The strike
was withdrawn unconditionally. After a few days of the strike, we
managed to produce about 1,900 Pulsars at Chakan and 1,200 to 1,300 in
Aurangabad. So there was no real loss in retail,” says S. Ravikumar,
Head of Business Development. “I think everyone has understood that when
Rajiv says something, there is a high probability he would go ahead and
do it.”
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