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Journalism of Courage
Americans are used to foreign cars 8212; nearly half of us, after all, drive on 8212; but no American has yet seen a vehicle bearing the brand name Tata Motors tooling along the highway. So when, a few weeks ago, news broke that this same Tata Motors, an Indian auto company, was close to buying Jaguar and Land Rover, the first reaction of many was 8220;Who?8221; The implausibility of the bid was magnified when Tata rolled out its newest product, a tiny, stripped-down car that will sell for a mere twenty-five hundred dollars. The spectacle of a low-end specialist trying to buy a couple of established luxury brands looked to some like a cubic-zirconium peddler making a play for Tiffany.
There8217;s no denying the audacity of Tata8217;s bid 8212; the company has never sold a car in the US 8212; but there8217;s also no denying Tata8217;s distinguished pedigree8230;. Today, Tata is a huge conglomerate 8212; ninety-eight companies producing everything from tea to steel and solar power 8212; with annual revenues of around thirty billion dollars and a chairman whom Fortune recently named one of the twenty-five most powerful people in business.
Now, a huge wave of what you might call developing-country multinationals 8212; companies like Mittal Steel, Lenovo, Chery Automobile 8212; and Cemex 8212; have recently begun to move aggressively into Western markets. These are the advance guard of what8217;s been called 8220;the emerging-markets century8221;8230; Globalisation, it once seemed, was mainly going to give companies in the US, Europe, and Japan billions of new customers and plenty of cheap labour. But it has also meant that these companies have had to face many more real competitors than they once imagined. When we persuaded developing countries to open their doors to us, we also opened our doors to them. Now they8217;re walking through.
Excerpted from James Surowiecki8217;s 8216;Tata Invasion8217; in the January issue of the 8216;New Yorker8217;
