What has been the broad strategy for doing business in Africa?
In the past few years we have evolved a three-phased approach. The first phase was settling down in South Africa, examining the challenges, evaluating the businesses we could get into and evolving the business model. In the second phase we began operations, starting with the motors business — first commercial vehicles, then passenger vehicles, and finally bus body building. Now we are looking at an assembly line. The cost of power in South Africa is very low and, therefore, Tata Steel got interested in ferrochrome smelting, which uses a huge amount of power. Here, the challenge was to get environmental clearances, because it’s a shore-based plant. Tata Africa presented the Neotel opportunity to the Group. VSNL showed an interest, and it fitted like a glove, as VSNL had the international network in place. It took us three years, but now Neotel is an operational project. The third phase will start now, when we get into new projects and expand existing ones. We are looking at hotels, we h
