Twin-Win Venture

As he prepares to take Varroc Engineering public, Tarang Jain joins twin brother Anurang on the 2018 Forbes World’s Billionaires List.

- Samar Srivastava

In August 2012, Tarang Jain had his most consequential chance at hitting the big league. Almost six years on, it’s clear he’s made the most of it.

Varroc Engineering, the company he founded in 1990, had completed the acquisition of Visteon’s global lighting business. Visteon Corp is an American global automotive electronics supplier that was spun off from Ford Motor Company in 2000. Jain, now 56, had to play a delicate balancing act. A misstep would have cost him dearly, perhaps even sunk the company.

Jain had acquired Visteon for $90.5 million (₹452 crore then). What he gained was the world’s sixth largest lighting business. Varroc now had access to a company that served the best global automakers. In addition its manufacturing footprint was entirely in low-cost manufacturing economies. “[We had] the humility to accept that we were buying into superior capability and technology,” says Jain, who set about building a durable partnership with the team in Detroit. The problems Visteon faced—like low Ebitda and lack of customer satisfaction—he realised, arose because the business had not been an area of focus for the earlier management.

In order to win Visteon’s trust, Jain ensured no Indian was sent to its facilities and the Visteon managers were given full operational control. The only direction from the top was to maintain a relentless focus on customer needs.