Hyundai Company needs to realize there’s a slew of Korean manufacturing companies are lined up for producing hi-tech products in India before involving in any political matter.
Hyundai is known for making cars, not soup. Yet it would seem, they’ve become better at landing in soup than making good cars. Hyundai is a great company. India is one of its biggest markets, and it provides a huge number of jobs here.
Yet for all that good, carelessness and churlishness have wiped out in a few hours the enormous goodwill it had built over decades. This is a sobering lesson in bad corporate management and pathetic public communications.
This isn’t the first time that Hyundai’s Pakistani dealer has gotten into politics and landed the company in soup. The Hyundai Pakistan dealership apparently did the same thing a few years ago, but was forced to delete it after the company picked it up early.
However, it did do the rounds of Indian auto-journalists’ Telegram groups. Hyundai is not the only one to do this. General Motors, Suzuki, Honda, Kia, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc. in Pakistan have all put out Kashmir Day propaganda in the past, and this has all gone under the radar in India.
For some reason, this time, it did not and has blown up. Let’s put this in context – first is India’s relative weakness and then there is India’s relative strength. India is not a major economy in the same league as China or the United States. Our expectations, therefore, have to be tempered by realism.
Moreover, in an economy which is dangerously following the Russians post the 1991 trajectory focusing on services rather than the Chinese post-1985 trajectory that focused on manufacturing, where the value addition of manufacturing has been falling every year we, need to understand our limitations. Hyundai either directly or indirectly employs close to half a million people in India.
ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: Deepika Padukone And Vicky Kaushal The Next IT Couple For A Hollywood Remake?!