by lijee philip it was a big reason why apollo tyres made the bold move this july to acquire american company cooper tirean operation twice its sizeand now its a reason why it is looking to renegotiate or break that agreement china its the worlds largest market its also a market with rules and a mind of its own apollo is finding that out workers of coopers chinese subsidiary have slammed the deal saying it does not comply with the countrys laws and its chinese partner has offered a buyout three others from the broad indian auto sector who ventured into china in the past decade sundram fasteners mahindra mahindra and bharat forgehave found out the hard way each is struggling to scale up and become relevant the china tractor acquisition was part of our growth plan to get a foothold into the worlds secondlargest tractor market says pawan goenka ed and president mahindra mahindra we could not have ignored our presence there but china where the state is never far away is not falling over itself to have indian companies li jia of ihs a research firm in china says indian companies dont offer anything unique new entrants need to show their clients reasons to buy their product which can be based on lower price superior technology better quality etc she says indian companies she adds have neither the brand pull of american and european companies nor the immaculate cost management of chinese companies global auto majors started entering china in 1984 when it opened its auto sector according to synergistics a chinabased auto consultancy only four jvs have disbanded while 23 survive bill russo president of synergistics says china caps a foreign companys share in new auto jvs at 50 but places no such restrictions on component ventures indian companies have tried operating in this framework but have faced a perception bias cultural and integration issues and lack of skilled labour indian companies have been unable to build scale and being overcalculative has left them with lower profits says vg ramakrishnan md of frost sullivan a consultancy they would rather invest in latin america and southeast asia china remains a long haul mahindra mahindra when mahindra mahindra made its two drives into china first in 2004 and then in 2009 it entered a market that was large but also incredibly crowded with about 200 manufacturers rubbing tyres its first acquisition was that of jiangling tractors a maker of lowhorsepower tractors 1833 hp mms plan was to ship jianglings low hp tractors to india and use china to develop business in europe us and australia but the low hp tractors did not take off in india and the chinese market started shifting to higher hp tractors despite mms longterm commitment in china there seems to be a management reluctance to go for the big investment says mahantesh sabarad senior analyst at fortune financials china in tractors has several common aggregate manufacturers who are akin