India
Rahul Bajaj
- Chair, Bajaj Group (Diversified)
Born Kolkata, India, 1938. Bachelors, University of Delhi (1958); MBA, Harvard Business School (1964).
“We were in a socialist raj. You couldn’t make anything until you got an industrial license and you couldn’t make more than the license capacity.”
Summary
Rahul Bajaj discusses the origins of his family business, including the close association with Mahatma Gandhi, and how he led Bajaj Auto to great success with the iconic three wheel scooter. This was achieved despite the “socialist raj” era in India between the 1950s and 1980s, when the delivery period for a Bajaj scooter could be ten years because the company was not allowed to increase capacity. Later, Bajaj discusses the public disagreement with his son Rajiv who decided to stop manufacturing scooters in 2009 while transitioning into motorcycle manufacturing. The interview concludes with incisive insights on corporate responsibility and philanthropy.
Video Clips by Topic
Social Responsibility
Rahul Bajaj, Chair of the diversified Bajaj Group, criticizes the Indian government's Companies Act in 2013 which mandated that large companies had to spend 2 per cent of their pre-tax profits on defined areas of CSR.
Keywords:
India, Corporate Social Responsibility
Innovation
Rahul Bajaj, the Chair of the India-based diversified business group Bajaj Group, discusses how he missed anticipating the change when India’s market moved from being primarily a market for scooters to one of motorcycles between 1998 and 2001.
Keywords:
India, Innovation
Corruption
Rahul Bajaj, Chair of the diversified business group Bajaj Group, describes how a government minister in India approached him for a favor, which he refused.
Keywords:
India, Corruption
Family Business
Rahul Bajaj, Chair of the diversified Bajaj Group in India, explains the different strategic visions of family managers and professional managers by considering the incentives and loyalty of each with reference to his own firm.
Keywords:
India, Family Business
Government Regulation
Rahul Bajaj, head of the India-based diversified business group Bajaj Group, talks about the days of License Raj in India before 1991 when Bajaj scooters had a ten-year delivery period. He discusses how people had to either book the scooter the minute a girl was born or buy it on the black market, as it was a necessary part of the bride's dowry.
Keywords:
India, Government Regulation
Additional Resources
Additional Resources
- Bajaj Auto Ltd. [HBS Case]
- Bajaj Auto Limited History
- “Bajaj Group: Sharing a Legacy,” LiveMint, August 19, 2014
- “I Am No Saint, Says Bajaj Auto Chairman Rahul Bajaj,” Forbes India, November 22, 2013
- “Secret of My Success: Rahul Bajaj on Vision, Brand, Philosophy,” NDTV, December 2, 2012
- “On Record with Rahul Bajaj,” Bloomberg TV, August 1, 2011
- Datamonitor, Bajaj Auto Ltd. SWOT Analysis, 2009-2014
- Niraj Dawar and Tony Frost, “Competing with Giants: Survival Strategies for Local Companies in Emerging Markets,” Harvard Business Review, March 1999
- Bal Ram Nanda, In Gandhi’s Footsteps: The Life and Times of Jamnalal Bajaj. Oxford University Press, 1990
- To a Gandhian Capitalist; Correspondence between Mahatma Gandhi and Jamnalal Bajaj and Members of His Family. Edited by Kaka Kalelkar, foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru. Hind Kitabs, 1951
- Video file of this interview available at Baker Library Historical Collections, histcollref+hbs.edu. Harvard ID holders can access the full-length video above.
Interview Citation Format
"Interview with Rahul Bajaj, interviewed by Srikant M. Datar, July 8, 2014, Creating Emerging Markets Project, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, http://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/."
