Collective Strength

With diversified conglomerate JSW Group coming on board, the JSW MG Motor India management is making a concerted push towards Indianising’ the company and expanding local manufacturing. These initiatives, it feels, will help it stay ahead of the curve

- ARNAB DUTTA

Picture this: The year, 1980. The place, India. Television broadcasts are in black & white. Telephones occupy pride of place in many homes. Bollywood blockbuster Qurbani has introduced disco music to the masses with its hit song “Aap Jaisa Koi”. And during office hours, roads in most cities see a steady rush of Bajaj scooters; and Ambassador and Fiat cars that are manufactured by Kolkata-based Hindustan Motors and Mumbaibased Premier Automobiles, respectively.

While Maruti Udyog had been set up in the early 1970s with an aim to build a passenger car company that caters to the country’s growing middle class, it is far from taking off.

Let us fast forward a few years. Executives from Suzuki Motor Corporation fly down from Japan with their technical know-how and investments—leading to the formation of Maruti Suzuki. The rest is history.

The Maruti Suzuki story has inspired a generation of entrepreneurs, including Sajjan Jindal, Chairman of diversified conglomerate JSW Group, who was beginning his journey then. “Making cars has been my childhood passion,” Jindal, 64, shared at an event more than 40 years later, adding that he built his first car in his garage when he was around 12. “And the passion of making cars has stayed with me.” Today, he is a happy man. After waiting for nearly four decades, he has achieved his dream of manufacturing passenger cars. In 2024, JSW Group picked up a 35% stake in MG Motor India. And like the Maruti story, with JSW MG Motor India—a joint venture with China’s leading carmaker, the stateowned SAIC Motor—Jindal plans to script history by transforming the local passenger car landscape, which is at the cusp of a green revolution, he revealed at the event to announce the JV.