Not too long ago, Peter Kronschnabl was ensconced in Munich, Germany, working as a general manager with luxury car maker BMW.
Entrusted with market development in the Asia-Pacific, Africa and central and east Europe, his job was to evaluate markets where BMW had the potential to set up its own subsidiary. He had already done Poland and Hungary when India began to beep on his radar. And that changed his life.
At first, it was like any other project report -- a desk analysis in June 2004 followed by two weeks of field analysis in September that involved meeting industrialists, consultants, potential buyers and long stretches of road travel.
At the end of it, Kronschnabl submitted a very optimistic opinion of India. "I gathered that everybody in India was on the move. The people were eager to achieve and open-minded. I could feel the drive of the country," he says.
In the normal course, he would be done by that stage and head to his post in Munich. But the BMW bosses decided to add a twist to the plot and asked Kronschnabl to make good his own report.
"A project like that. . . India is BMW's most strategic project globally. . . You do the entire groundwork and entry. . . you can prove in reality that the strategy was right."
He proved that so quickly that he surprised himself. Unmarried, Kronschnabl moved to India in August 2006 as country head and president and ignited operations in January of next year.
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