India, Inc. in takeover mode

Ladies and gentlemen please take yourseats. You are about to witness one of the greatest shows on earth: the gradualIndian takeover of global companies.
As the process unfolds, everyworthwhile Indian company will become a multinational corporation (MNC) that notonly starts businesses abroad but also swallows up existing foreignmultinationals. (Do we have it in us to rival Western MNCs?)
When India began globalising in 1991, the Indianleft howled that this would mean the wholesale takeover of Indian companies byforeign multinational companies (MNCs).
When liberalisers like mesuggested that globalisation would equally mean the takeover of foreign companies by Indian multinationals, we were viewed with amusement as some sort ofcreatures from outer space.
So entrenched was the notion of Indianinferiority and foreign superiority that the very thought of Indian companiestaking over global ones was regarded as science fiction.

Today, it has become areality. The trend began haltingly a few years ago. In 2000, Tata Tea took overa global company twice its size, Tetley Tea, the second biggest tea company inthe world. This was a leveraged buyout.
That is, global financiersprovided the funds to enable an Indian minnow to take over a global whale. Farfrom being a force of neo-colonialism, global finance is now helping smallerIndian companies to acquire much larger global ones.
Next, Essel Packaging, owned by Subhash Chandra, took over Propack of Switzerland to form EsselPropack. The merger created the biggest producer in the world of laminatedtubes, and an Indian MNC became global number one.
But these takeoversremained exceptional events till 2003. Only in that year did the pace of Indiantakeovers accelerate so much as to constitute a new trend, one that the worldmust sit up and take notice of.
According to one source, more than 40foreign companies were taken over by Indians last year. Just consider the mainexamples:

Tata Motors is all set to acquire the truckfactories of Daewoo in South Korea for a reported $118 million.
TheAmbanis have bid for, and look very likely to takeover, Flag International, a major internationaltelecom network, for perhaps $211 million.
Ranbaxy, our biggestpharmaceutical company, has just acquired RPG Aventis , the French generic wingof the multinational Aventis. Here again, an Indian minnow has acquired part ofa global whale.
Wockhardt, owned by the Khorakiwalas, acquired CPPharmaceuticals of UK. The Khorakiwalas had already made a minor foreignacquisition, of Wallis Laboratories, in 1998.
Hindalco, the flagshipcompany of the Kumar Birla group, acquired two copper mines in Australia —Mount Gordon and Nifty.

Sterlite, the successfulbidder for the privatisation of Bharat Aluminium and Hindustan Zinc, has becomea true multinational by acquiring copper mines in Australia. It has also beenshort-listed as the preferred bidder for buying a 51 per cent stake in KonkolaCopper Mines, the biggest government-owned mine in Zambia.
Readers mightthink that only the biggest Indian companies can get into the global takeovergame. This is simply not so. Many middle-sized companies, which readers may noteven have heard of, are becoming multinationals through foreign acquisitions.
Sundaram Fasteners, whose production-line includes humble items likeradiator caps, nuts and bolts, has acquired Dana Spicer Europe, the British armof a global multinational. Separately, Sundaram Fasteners is setting up a plantin China to take on the mighty Chinese.
Amtek Auto, another auto ancillarythat came up in the 1990s, has just acquired the GWK group in the UK, which istwice its size. Indian auto ancillary companies are sweeping world exportmarkets and in the process acquiring MNC rivals that cannot compete.
After30 years of supplying components to UK-based SPP Pumps, Kirloskar Brothers hasnow acquired a majority stake in the British company. Truly, this is a case ofthe empire striking back.

I do not wish to borereaders by converting this column into a long, seemingly endless list. Yet, thelengthy and seemingly endless nature of our global takeovers cry out forattention.
In this column, I have listed only Indian takeovers of foreigncompanies, not the many new factories that Indian companies are putting upoverseas.
Again, I have left out of my list a large number of foreignsoftware and BPO companies that are regularly being acquired by top Indiancompanies. I have concentrated on manufacturing, where Indians are supposed tobe least competitive.
The left is correct in saying that globalisationimplies the takeover of Indian companies by MNCs, but wrong in implying thattakeovers are a one-way street.
The global system is no longer rigged byand for white men. It can be used by Indians no less than Americans to leveragetheir talent to create global corporate empires. The process has begun.