[Business Today]

Published date: 2nd Oct 2011

Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our collective memory is etched with historic events. The day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon/Indira Gandhi was assassinated/the Berlin Wall fell have calibrated the second half of the 20th century. This generation has 9/11 (and now Anna Hazare). I remember I was driving to Singapore airport that night in 2001 when my daughter called from California to say there had been an “accident” at the Twin Towers in New York. By the time I checked in, shocked travellers were staring at TV screens as the second plane. United Flight 175, hit the South Tower. Badly shaken but unable to comprehend how cataclysmic the attacks were, I climbed into a British Airways flight to London. For the next 13 hours, sealed in a metal tube hurtling towards what? with dozens of other sleepless passengers. I had no inkling of what the world had become in a flash of flame and dust. In the decade since, terror has become a constant in our lives, wherever we live on this planet. Four days before the tenth anniversary (why that should be more significant than the ninth, or the sixth, I don’t know) a briefcase bomb planted at the Delhi High Court killed and maimed friends of friends and children of friends. We must pick ourselves up and move on.

Talking of overcoming odds, you can read about David vanquishing Goliath in the Old Testament at 1 Samuel 17. but at Business Today we are often contrarian and put our faith in companies that have an excellent shot at being very big. and impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This fortnight we celebrate 19 of Tomorrow’s Goliaths (starting page 58) that we don’t believe will be up against any Davids any time soon. This is the third of four quarterly specials in this special 20th anniversary year (yes, India’s No. 1 business magazine also believes in signposts). Will we be proven right? Watch these pages for progress reports; we do not just rest on our bets.

There was another story that we had to take note of, hence the ‘double’ cover this issue. For 20 years. Anand Mahindra has had his foot pressed firmly on the accelerator at the automotive, aviation and software giant bearing his family name. He has made a few audacious bets, like we have, and he is evangelical about his mission. Business leaders like The Scorpio King are particularly worthy of study because they took the DNA from a pre-reform Jurassic Park and cloned a new breed of Indian entrepreneur. Go to page 44 for this new testament, and to page 54 for the words of the apostle of Rise (full text on our web site at www.businesstoday.in/anandmahindra).

There are a lot of wheels this issue (see Honda, page 38) and if you have secretly dreamt of sitting astride more than 100 horsepower of brute engineering, don’t miss the paean to Harley-Davidsons starting on page 120. And by the way, our Most Powerful Women in Indian Business Awards in Mumbai on August 30 were a great success. For keynote speaker Sara Mathew’s inspiring speech, click on www.businesstoday.in/mathew.