When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something.
People of great power wield great power, but people of lesser power or people who have fallen out of power go to jail without adequate evidence, or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars.
Fiat has assembly plants in Brazil and Argentina.
I came seriously close to getting married four times, and each time I backed off in fear or for one reason or another. Each occasion was different, but in hindsight when I look at the people involved, it wasn't a bad thing what I did. I think it may have been more complex had the marriage taken place.
Banana republics are run on cronyism.
I have always been bullish about India's potential. I still am, and I feel India is a country that really has an enormous amount of potential and has the human capital to succeed.
I followed someone who had very large shoes. He had very large shoes. Mr. J. R. D. Tata. He was a legend in the Indian business community. He had been at the helm of the Tata organization for 50 years. You were almost starting to think he was going to be there forever.
I think there are many honest businessmen.
Indian car buyers have not really been exposed to customer care in a competitive environment.
I'm the non-executive chairman of nine or so major companies, and on the nine companies, it's a little trying because you jump from one industry to another, as the case might be. But one had the reasonable knowledge of those nine activities, and it's been an exciting job.
I always felt that Nano should have been marketed towards the owner of a two-wheeler because it was conceived giving the people who rode on two wheels with the whole family an all-weather safe form of affordable transportation, not the cheapest.
I may have hurt some people along the way, but I would like to be seen as somebody who has done his best to do the right thing for any situation and not compromised.
Jardine is the largest dealer of Mercedes in the world. They also sell cars for two or three Japanese makers.
After I retired, it seemed to me that there was a whole new world out there, which was a digital world driven by a marketplace, basically, which had a huge potential driven by handheld devices, which would one day become the virtual retail store of India.
If we dispense with some of our self-made boundaries, India can really take its place in the world as an economic power. It hasn't happened because we, sadly, don't look at ourselves as Indians but as Punjabis or Parsis, unlike the Americans. Don't make such boundaries.
When you have to earmark human and monetary resources for such a long time, it starts to hinder your other activities.
The economic situation, the high cost of undertaking manufacturing, the supply chain - which is, by the way, dying out also as manufacturing undergoes hardship - make the U.K. not the first place you would look at to make a manufacturing investment.
I buy a lot of electronics, some which I never take out of the box!
I quite frankly enjoy the touch and feel of a store, so I am a big bookshop person. Or, I go to an electronics store; Best Buy and Croma are places I could spend a lot of time in.
New startups embody the creativity, the innovation of young people, and for me, it was and is a very worthwhile experience to interact with them.
