Pillar of India’s auto industry dies after heart attack
Vikram Kirloskar, vice-chairperson of Toyota Kirloskar Motor and the man credited with winning the trust of Japanese automotive behemoth Toyota for its India bet, died late Tuesday night.
Kirloskar, 64, suffered a heart attack on Tuesday morning and was rushed to Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru, where he passed away. He is survived by his wife, Geetanjali, and daughter Manasi, who was inducted on the board of Toyota Kirloskar Motor last year.
Kirloskar Group now holds 11% of the joint venture forged 25 years ago in 1997, while the majority stake in the company is held by Toyota Motor Co., one of the world’s largest automotive groups.
The first alliance between Toyota and the Kirloskars, however, goes back to the 1980s, when Kirloskar learnt of Toyota’s legacy in automatic looms during his travels to Japan.
So, they formed an alliance in the textile machinery space. Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus’s front grille— the spindle grille—is a nod to those roots.
A prominent industrial group, Kirloskars were already a stable partner for Toyota in India, and the automotive joint venture Vikram Kirloskar stitched up with the Japanese major was based on that trust. The stability of a JV of this kind is rare—and Kirloskar’s adherence to the Japanese philosophy of playing designated roles is an important piece of it.
“The relationship (between Kirloskar and Toyota) has been stable because both parties understood their roles in this relationship, and no one exceeded their boundaries. Kirloskar knew his role very well, and he wouldn’t overstep it. He gave the understanding of total non-interference to the other side so that Toyota India is no different from its outposts in other countries, barring, of course, the unique regulatory flavour in India—a role he performed to perfection in his various capacities at the helm of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM)”, an industry executive close to Kirloskar said, not wanting to be named.