马欣德拉 廉价并非印度制造唯一优势

For his latest automotive venture, Anand Mahindra has turned Asia’s conventional industrial wisdom on its head.

阿南德•马欣德拉(Anand Mahindra)最新的汽车事业颠覆了亚洲的传统产业智慧。

Instead of assembling the product — the new GenZe electric scooter — with low-cost factory labour in Asia and exporting it to the US, India’s Mahindra & Mahindra has opted for what it calls an “all-American product”. It was designed in Silicon Valley and will be made in Ann Arbor, Michigan under the supervision of 60 relatively expensive engineers, with components from across the globe.

印度企业马欣德拉(Mahindra & Mahindra)并没有利用亚洲工厂里的低成本劳动力组装其新产品——GenZe电动摩托车——并出口到美国，而是选择打造一款“全美国产品”。这款产品在硅谷设计，将在密歇根州安阿伯(Ann Arbor, Michigan)制造，制造过程会在60名薪水相对亚洲较高的工程师指导下进行，使用的部件将来自全球各地。

“This is the new animal that a global new product manufacturing set-up is going to be,” says Mr Mahindra, the Harvard-educated billionaire who took the helm of the $16bn Indian conglomerate as chairman three years ago.

“一种新的全球化产品制造模式就将是这样的，”有哈佛大学(Harvard University)教育背景的亿万富翁马欣德拉说，3年前他开始作为董事长执掌这家市值160亿美元的印度企业集团。

“We really felt that India didn’t have the start-up atmosphere . . . We had a number of people join us from [US electric carmaker] Tesla Motors, for example, because they were excited about this and the Valley allows people just to migrate and to try out new things.”

“我们确实感觉印度没有初创企业的氛围……比如，一些来自（美国电动汽车制造商）特斯拉汽车(Tesla Motors)的人加入了我们，因为他们对此感到兴奋，而硅谷又允许人们随意迁入，试验新的事物。”

The GenZe is a modest project for the time being. The $3,000 scooter with a computer touchscreen and power sockets for cellphones and laptops is aimed at students and young professionals and is expected to launch in Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon in a few months, with initial annual production capacity of 20,000 units.

就目前而言，GenZe是一个规模较小的项目。这款售价3000美元的电动摩托车配有一块电脑触摸屏，以及为手机和笔记本电脑设计的充电口，目标客户群是学生和年轻的专业人士，预计几个月后将在加州伯克利和俄勒冈州波特兰发售，初步的年产量为两万台。

But the plan exemplifies the challenges facing the business models of traditional Indian manufacturers such as Mahindra, and illustrates the difficultiesNarendra Modi, India’s prime minister, will have in creating millions of jobs through his “Make in India” campaign of promoting the country as a low-cost alternative to China.

但这个计划充分体现出马欣德拉等传统印度生产商的商业模式面临的挑战，也表明印度总理纳伦德拉•莫迪(Narendra Modi)通过他本人提出的“印度制造”(Make in India)计划创造数百万就业机会的打算将面临的困难。“印度制造”计划旨在宣扬印度成本更低、可替代中国。

The Mahindra conglomerate’s existing US businesses are based largely on the competitiveness of Asian manufacturing and services: the group is the world’s largest tractor brand by volume and sells the vehicles made in India, Japan and South Korea through 525 American dealerships aimed primarily at smaller enterprises and hobby farmers. Tech Mahindraprovides IT services to 360 of the Fortune 500 companies.

马欣德拉企业集团旗下现有的美国业务基本以亚洲制造业和服务业的竞争力为基础：该集团拥有以销量计世界最大的拖拉机品牌，通过525家美国经销商销售在印度、日本和韩国生产的拖拉机，主要面向中小型企业和农业爱好者。Tech Mahindra向《财富》(Fortune) 500强企业中的360家企业提供IT服务。

Interviewed in his Mumbai of¬fice, Mr Mahindra is as cheerful as ever under his trademark shock of white-streaked hair, but he is grappling with an upheaval in global manufacturing that has seen the rapid rise of automation, more demand for high-tech products, and intense competition in an Indian domestic automotive market beset by economic uncertainty and unpredictable monsoon rains.

在位于孟买的办公室接受采访时，一头标志性花白头发的马欣德拉一如既往地喜气洋洋，但他正在艰难应对全球制造业的一场巨变，这个行业见证了自动化的迅速崛起、高科技产品的需求上升、受困于经济前景不确定和变化莫测的季风雨的印度国内汽车市场的激烈竞争。

“We [in India] are not where China was when it made its decision to go in for labour-intensive manufacturing. It was in the right place at the right time. It became the world’s supplier and grew rich on the back of that. I don’t think India has that opportunity — that is our biggest problem,” he says.

“我们（印度）如今所处的境况与中国决定发展劳动力密集制造业时的情况不同。当时中国处于正确的地点和时机。中国成为了世界的供应商，并依靠这一点富裕起来。我不认为印度有这样的机会——这是我们最大的问题，”马欣德拉说。

“The world is moving away from simply low-cost elements. Products today are products which require a brand, which require innovation, and which have a very strong element of both IT and services involved in them.”

“当今世界，只看低成本元素日益行不通了。今天的产品需要品牌，需要创新，需要同时包含很强的IT和服务要素。”

Mr Mahindra explains this in terms of Barbie dolls. In the old days, it was just a doll, but in the future it could be something robotic that walks and thinks — “intelligent Barbie — it sounds like an oxymoron”, he says with a smile.

马欣德拉用芭比娃娃来做解释。过去，这仅仅是个娃娃，但是将来可能会是能走能思考的机器人了。“智能芭比——虽然这听起来有些矛盾”，他微笑着说。

India in general, and companies such as Mahindra, are by no means excluded from this new, high-tech manufacturing world. It is true that India suffers from poor education and a desperate shortage of skills, but it also has well-known strengths in IT in geographical areas that overlap with those of the motor industry: in Chennai, Gurgaon, Pune and Mumbai, for example. The two sectors are closely connected too: while the core of Mahindra’s Indian motor business is SUVs for the price-conscious local market, Tech Mahindra’s international work includes producing software for driverless vehicles.

整体而言，印度、以及像马欣德拉这样的企业，无论如何都不会被排除在这个新的高科技制造世界之外。尽管印度确实饱受教育水平低下和技能严重匮乏之困，但印度世所闻名的IT优势所处的地理区位也恰好与汽车工业的所在地重合：比如金奈(Chennai)，古尔冈(Gurgaon)，浦那(Pune)和孟买。这两个行业也是密切相连的：马欣德拉在印度的核心汽车业务是面向当地对价格敏感的市场提供运动型多功能车(SUV)，Tech Mahindra的国际业务则包括为无人驾驶汽车开发软件。

“When people think of manufacturing, it is no longer a very simplistic framework that you can apply, a very binary one that ‘I need to make something low-cost so I go to China . . . Now China’s place in the sun is gone, go to India’,” he says. “That’s not how people are going to have to think. They’re going to have to create a footprint which might be like a neural network which involves nodes in various places.

“当人们思考制造业的时候，使用那种简单化的思维模式已经行不通了，那种两段论——‘我需要生产低成本的东西，我就去中国……如今中国不是最佳制造地了，我就去印度’，”他说。“这不是人们以后不得不采取的思维方式。人们将不得不创造这样的足迹，或许就像神经网络一样，节点遍布各个地方。”

“You incubate a product in an atmosphere where that product is best incubated. So, for example, we incubated our electric scooter in California. Because it’s low-volume manufacturing but high-intelligence, intensive manufacturing, we are starting in Michigan. At a point where the volume is going to be much higher and labour is a much higher component, we will pick a different part of the world, most likely India.”

“你孵化一个产品，会选择最适合孵化它的环境。所以，打个比方，我们会在加州孵化我们的电动摩托车。它是个小批量生产的产品，但高度智能化、生产集约化，因此我们从密歇根州起步。到了某个程度，其产量会大幅度提高，工人的数量也会大幅增加，届时我们将选择其他地区，最可能的就是印度。”

As well as struggling to devise a profitable manufacturing strategy for the future, Mr Mahindra is grappling with the need to make sense of a highly diversified conglomerate of the sort often unpopular with focused investors and financial analysts.

马欣德拉除了难以制定出面向未来的可盈利制造策略，还难以对高度多元化企业集团的合理性进行必要的证明，这类企业通常不受重点投资者和金融分析师的待见。

With its origins in a quintessentially Indian family enterprise built in a protected post-independence economy, Mahindra not only sells IT services, tractors, trucks, cars, three-wheelers, two-wheelers and small aircraft, but is also involved in defence, renewable energy, banking, insurance, retail, real estate and holidays. Mr Mahindra, a member of the third generation, whose own wealth is estimated by Forbes at $1.2bn, is not shy of acquisitions. He bought Ssangyong Motor and the scandal-hit Satyam Computer Services among others — and is constantly on the watch for the chance to buy a high-end automotive brand.

马欣德拉起源于一个典型的印度家族企业，在独立后受保护的经济环境中逐渐壮大，它不仅销售IT服务、拖拉机、卡车、汽车、三轮车、两轮车和小型飞机，还涉足国防、可再生能源、银行业、保险、零售、房地产以及度假产业。阿南德•马欣德拉是该家族第三代成员，据福布斯(Forbes)估计他的资产为12亿美元。阿南德在收购企业时从不手软，他收购的企业包括双龙汽车(Ssangyong Motor)，以及陷入丑闻的萨蒂扬软件技术有限公司(Satyam Computer Services)等等。阿南德还一直在留心收购一个高端汽车品牌的机会。

“We don’t call it a conglomerate, we call it a federation,” he says. “If you look at a spectrum between General Electric and Berkshire Hathaway, GE is a conglomerate, one single monolithic company with divisions, Berkshire Hathaway has multiple investments.”

阿南德说：“我们不会自称为企业集团，我们称之为联盟。如果你将通用电气(GE)和伯克希尔哈撒韦公司(Berkshire Hathaway)放在一个光谱的两端，那么通用电气就是企业集团，一个有许多部门的单一整体公司。伯克希尔哈撒韦则拥有众多投资项目。”

Mahindra, in short, is more Berkshire Hathaway than GE and the boss is in no mood to abandon the safety of diversification.

简言之，马欣德拉更像伯克希尔哈撒韦、而不是通用电气，而老板本人也无意放弃多元化带来的安全保障。

“If I was sitting here and I had only one unit — an SUV diesel business — even if I was making a 25 per cent return today, your question would be, ‘Anand, are you going to survive?’ Right? Here I am. I’m seeding other parts.

“如果我坐在这个位子上，旗下只有一个部门，比如运动型多功能车(SUV)柴油车业务，哪怕现在我的回报率是25%，你仍会问，‘阿南德，你能生存下去吗？’对吧？我已经决定了。我要培育其他业务。”

“I’ve got an electric vehicle business. If the world moves, in [big cities], away from vehicles and they say only two-wheelers, and battery two-wheelers, are going to be able to survive, guess who’ll have a product? If they say electric vehicles only in Delhi tomorrow after banning 10-year-old diesel vehicles [this was announced in April by the National Green Tribunal, but the ban has been suspended for the time being], guess who has a product?”

“我已经有了电动车业务。如果全世界（的大城市）要告别汽车，然后他们说只有两轮车、电动两轮车可以继续使用，猜猜谁拿得出合适的产品？如果他们继禁止10年车龄的柴油车上路后（印度国家绿色法庭(National Green Tribunal)今年4月宣布该禁令，但暂未实施），明天又说在德里只能开电动车，你猜谁能拿出合适的产品？”

With a hint of defensiveness, Mr Mahindra rejects criticism by analysts of his moves into new markets and product categories. “The moment I say I’m going into scooters, they say ‘you’re crazy’. Six months later when BMW comes out with an electric scooter, it’s fine. But when Anand does it, because he’s some small guy in India, it’s not fine.”

马欣德拉进军新市场以及新的产品种类之举受到了分析师的批评，对此他有些戒备地拒绝接受。“当我说我要做摩托车时，他们说‘你疯了’。6个月后宝马(BMW)推出了一款电动摩托车，大家都觉得没问题。但是阿南德要做这个就不行，因为他只是印度的一个小人物。”

Mahindra, of course, is not small — it has operations in 100 countries — but Mr Mahindra the conglomerate chief still describes himself as an entrepreneur, despite, or perhaps because of, the multitude of businesses he controls.

马欣德拉当然不是小企业，它的业务遍及100个国家，但作为企业集团老板的阿南德仍将自己形容成一个创业者，尽管（或者是因为）他操控着如此多业务。

“Our performance has borne out the fact that the model seems to work. I have been facing this question now for the past two decades and I’m still around, still have my job, so something must be working,” he says.

阿南德说:“我们的成绩已经证明，这一模式似乎可行。过去二十年我一直面对着这个问题，而我还在这里，还在这个位置上，所以有些东西肯定是可行的。”