Good morning.
India is hot right now with U.S. consumers and companies. When Mattel launched its first Diwali Barbie earlier this month, the doll sold out in a day. U.S. retailers like Target, Costco and Walmart are doubling down on products to celebrate the Indian festival of lights, which will begin this year on October 31.
At its inaugural India Growth Summit this year, Walmart reiterated a pledge to annually source $10 billion in goods from India by 2027. Meanwhile, U.S. imports from India have more than doubled in the last decade to $87.3 billion last year.
Of course, India has long been a place where U.S. companies located back-office and enterprise support functions due to its skilled workforce, low labor costs, and ease of communication, spawning household names like Infosys, Wipro and HCL. The country’s economic reforms and fast-growing middle class helped propel companies like HDFC Bank onto the Fortune Global 500 list this year.
I recently spoke with Viren Popli, CEO of Houston-based Mahindra Ag North America (MAgNA), part of the broader Mahindra Group. In addition to boasting the world’s top-selling tractor by volume, Mahindra has been early with innovations like a tractor that runs on compressed bio-gas and “smart” subcompact tractors. Popli also oversees the automotive business in North America and Mahindra Brazil, where it opened a new production facility earlier this year.
While Mahindra’s Brazil business is focused lower-cost basic tractors, its 30-year-old U.S. business has a higher portion of hobby farmers seeking small but sophisticated machines. “About 15% of the market is below 20 horsepower,” he says. “These are the rural lifestyle seekers who buy big pieces of land and want to maybe have a small vegetable patch … They’re escaping technology and urban lifestyle, going back to this so-called simple life.”
“I think the brand of India itself is growing in the U.S.,” says Popli. “It started off with tech and now we’ve had lots of senior leadership in various organizations and Indian brands coming in the supply chain.”
As one of the largest Indian B2C brands in the U.S., Popli is aware of geopolitical forces that impact sales. “At a dealer conference recently, I got asked by about 10 dealers, how much Chinese content do you have in your product? We’ve never been asked about that.”
For some U.S. customers, Mahindra is best known as the anchor sponsor for the No. 14 NASCAR Cup Series team and driver Chase Briscoe. “The community that watches it is largely rural,” says Popli. “And it’s so cool.”
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Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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