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Friday, January 10, 2014
BUSINESS Section 2
FRIDAY, January 10, 2014
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A Cult Motorcycle From Critical Gates memoir rocks India Takes On the World Obama administration
The Royal Enfield Motors factory in Chennai, India. The brand sold nearly 175,000 motorcycles in 2013.
by Samanth Subramanian
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EW DELHI, India — The Royal Enfield Bullet, often described as the oldest continuously produced motorcycle in the world, is a cult product for enthusiasts who love it for its vintage feel as much as for the thrum of its engine. Muscular and pliant, the Bullet — an Indian-made avatar of an old British brand — has found renewed popularity over the last few years, as leisure motorcycling in India has blossomed. Its manufacturer, Royal Enfield Motors, sold almost 175,000 motorcycles —Bullets as well as three other brands — in 2013. The company is now looking to push harder into British and American markets, hoping to follow in the wake of other Indian motor vehicle manufacturers that have competed hard with overseas brands even as their peers in other industries have struggled. Royal Enfield’s newest model, a midsize “cafe racer” called the Continental GT, was introduced at an elaborate event in London in September. “It’s the first bike that we’ve developed keeping the world market in mind,” said Siddhartha Lal, who is credited with turning Royal Enfield around. Mr. Lal, age 40, is the chief executive of Eicher Motors, a manufacturer of buses, trucks and tractors that owns Royal Enfield. Uncommonly for an Indian executive, he sports sideburns and wears jeans and a bomber jacket to meetings. He was riding a Bullet when he was in university, well before Eicher, under his father’s management,
bought Royal Enfield in 1993. The sale price was “just pennies,” Mr. Lal said. Eicher reported revenue of more than $1 billion in 2012. The Bullet was first produced by a British firm named Royal Enfield, but after that company shut down in 1971, its Indian manufacturing unit – in the city of Madras (now Chennai) – bought the rights to the name and continued to produce the Bullet. But through the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Lal said, Royal Enfield’s management made a series of bad decisions and buried the company in debt. “The motorcycle was still resilient, though. It was probably selling 1,500 or 2,000 pieces a month,” he said. “Eicher bought Royal Enfield because at its core was the Bullet. That was the appeal.” Mr. Lal set himself to turn Royal Enfield around in 2000, when he was 27, and the company first sputtered and then roared back to life. Dan Holmes, who fell so in love with a Bullet he saw at a trade show that he opened a Royal Enfield dealership in Goshen, Ind., recalled how the quality of the motorcycles improved from the late 1990s through the 2000s. “Eicher started investing real money into their bikes,” Mr. Holmes said. The electric start grew more reliable while fuel injections and transmissions were revamped. The Royal Enfield motorcycle, whose basic profile changed very little over the years, appealed to buyers, he said, because one could tinker endlessly with it. Jay Leno owns one, as
does Billy Joel. Mr. Holmes himself owns what he calls “the two most modified Royal Enfields in the world,” which he used to set speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2008. As one of perhaps seven or eight exclusive Royal Enfield dealers in the United States back in the early 2000s, Mr. Holmes sold his motorcycles for $3,500 to $4,000 each, taking custody of them in dribs and drabs from a national distributor. In 2003, his best year, he sold 35 Royal Enfields. Exports remain limited, although they are growing, and Mr. Lal is ambitious about scaling up. Last year, Royal Enfield exported 3,500 motorcycles. Six hundred of those went to America, its biggest overseas market. Back in India, however, Royal Enfield has caught the beginning of a wave in leisure motorcycling. Kumar Kandaswami, a senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India, said a split had emerged in the market, between riders who wanted light motorcycles just to commute and those who wanted the thrill of the machine itself. “Even at a rough estimate, there are easily half a million buyers out there who want to use motorcycles for leisure,” Mr. Kandaswami said. “There are active motorcycle communities now. Our highways have improved. People have more money to spend.” The vastness of this market attracted manufacturers like the British Triumph, which opened in India in 2013, and HarleyDavidson, which arrived in 2009. (The New York Times)
Infosys mulls double-digit pay hike to retain staff after many senior-level exits BANGALORE: Infosys is considering double digit pay raises as chairman NR Narayana Murthy looks to keep the workforce of 1.5 lakh motivated, people aware of discussions in the company said. Although growth is showing signs of picking up, several senior executives have left the Bangalore-based company in recent months, making it imperative for attractive pay raises to keep employee morale high. “Not only have they decided to hand out bigger pay increases, there will also be more promotions,” said a senior industry executive on condition of anonymity. “Hikes could fall in the 8 per cent to 12 per cent range to motivate employees,” the person said. Infosys usually announces pay increases in June. A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment. Last year, Infosys raised salaries for staff in India by 8 per cent on average, shortly after founder Murthy returned to lead the company as executive chairman in June. “I think Murthy’s going to offer higher wage hikes because a combination of hikes
US President Barack Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to outgoing defense secretary Robert Gates, June 30, 2011, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan) by Stephen Collinson
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ASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House on Wednesday fought back against former Pentagon chief Robert Gates’s blunt criticism of President Barack Obama’s war leadership and damning of Vice President Joe Biden. Gates, who served six presidents in senior national security jobs, sent political shockwaves through Washington with his unsparing assessments of the administration in his new book. Among other accusations, the Republican accused Biden of being wrong about every big foreign policy issue for decades and alleged Obama lost faith in his own troop surge strategy for the Afghan war. The White House insisted that Obama had expected and welcomed constructive dissent in his foreign policy team after picking a so-called “team of rivals” in his first term cabinet. And in a rare move, press photographers were invited into Obama’s weekly lunch with Biden in the private dining room off the Oval Office, in an apparent show of unity. The defense of Biden also left the impression that White House aides are not averse to the focus being trained on the vice president, rather than Obama’s credentials as commander-in-chief. “As a senator and as the vice president, Joe Biden has been
one of the leading statesmen of his time,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “He has been an excellent counselor and adviser to the president for the past five years.” “He’s played a key role in every major national security and foreign policy debate and policy discussion in this administration.” Tell-all memoirs by former administration officials looking to gild their retirement and bolster their legacies are nothing new -- and uniformly infuriate presidents, whichever party runs the White House. But the Gates bombshell was remarkable because of the pedigree of the former defense secretary and CIA chief, his long experience as a confidant of presidents, and his reputation for unruffled integrity. So it is more difficult for the White House to write off the book -- “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War” -- due to be published on January 14, as typical score settling by a holdover from the George W. Bush administration who was kept on by Obama. In the most damaging revelations, Gates suggested Obama soured on his own troop surge strategy in Afghanistan and lost confidence in General David Petraeus and other military brass he picked to lead it. Obama “can’t stand (Afghan president Hamid) Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own
strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. “For him it’s all about getting out,” Gates wrote, according to the Washington Post. Gates also slams White House aides for obsessive attempts to control US national security and foreign policy to the detriment of the State Department and the Pentagon, and excerpts from his book reek of a deep distaste for Washington and its political games. In comments which could reverberate in the 2016 presidential campaign, he says former secretary of state Hillary Clinton told Obama she only opposed a troop surge strategy in Iraq for political reasons during the heat of their primary battle. The political gang that Gates so disdained was out in the president’s defense on Wednesday. “He always indicated he had a good working relationship with the president,” David Axelrod, a former top Obama aide who remains close to the president, told NBC. Former White House chief of staff Bill Daley said on CBS that Gates’s memoir represented a “disservice” while the administration was still fighting the Afghan war. Gates’ stature gives the allegations extra currency and they are likely to linger in the political discourse in Washington for years, and in histories that will shape Obama’s legacy. While Gates said plenty of
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NR Narayana Murthy
and other factors will be critical to retaining people,” said Ajit Isaac, managing director and chief executive of Ikya Human Capital Solutions, a staffing company that serves the Indian IT sector. Analysts said the decision to offer higher pay hikes is a welcome one although it could impact the company’s margins. “At this point, improving employee sentiment matters more than worrying about dip in margins,” an analyst with a foreign brokerage firm said on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
Attrition at Infosys was 17.3 per cent at the end of the September quarter, the highest among the tier-1 Indian IT providers, illustrating that the company had become fertile poaching ground for rivals, as demand picked up for the $108 billion outsourcing industry. In comparison, Tata Consultancy Services, which had announced a 5-10 per cent pay increase in April, had an attrition of 10.9 per cent at the end of second quarter. Last June, Wipro said it was raising salaries by 6-8 per cent for its employees.
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