TOPGEAR.COM → JULY 2019 025
Skoda Auto India has got an enhanced role to play in VW Group’s
scheme of things. Not only does it have to lead the Indian product
portfolio development, its management has to steer the Czech brand
from the shadows of its German sibling with an aim to bring it to the
kind of limelight it enjoyed as one of the first European players on our
roads. There is a new man to spearhead this crucial marketing and
sales onslaught in India. Zac Hollis is a true petrolhead, fell in love
with India on his first visit and thinks Skoda Auto India can carry off it’s
new leadership role rather seamlessly. Girish Karkera finds out how.
ZAC HOLLIS
PHOTOGRAPHY: RAJEEV GAIKWADt the risk of sounding like I am plugging my
magazine, Zac Hollis (49), Skoda Auto India’s
new head of marketing sales, is flipping
through the latest issue of TopGear India as
we enter his room. We are dot on time for the
meet despite unpredictable Mumbai traffic. “This quality is
unbelievable,” he gushes about the issue in his hand as we
exchange pleasantaries (seriously, I am NOT plugging this).
He goes on to say how India has surprised and enchanted him
in what is technically his first long visit here.
So, I start off by enquiring about what impressed him most
about India.
“You want one thing,” he says rather exuberantly. Can I
do, two or three?” As I nod he goes on to talk about, hold on,
Indian food!
“Food is amazing here. You can have a great meal under
` 100 for which you would probably pay ` 1000 elsewhere.
All over India, you get different food. I found the (working)
culture really good as well. People are relatively relaxed (well,
his last stint was China). This is almost like British culture
back home. Relaxed and all.”
What Zac plans to do next is experience the countr yside.“I plan to see that in the next three months. I am going to visit
Chandigarh, and two other places this month just to try and
explore the country. And work,” he adds quickly with a
cheeky smile.
While Zac has been in India for over six months now, his
packed schedule hasn’t allowed him to explore places he has
visited. “I travel from one airport to another, go for an official
lunch, meet the team over there, go to dinner and off to bed,”
he laments. Of course, as a foreign tourist, he has done the
usual Golden Triangle (Delhi, Jaipur, Agra) a few years back
but admits that he now realises it’s not what India is about.
“I came here as a tourist in 2015 but had no idea that I was
ever going to work here. Ever y thing happened within minutes.
I suddenly got a phone call and here I am.”
He is here, but in seriously troubled times for the Indian
auto industr y which is seeing an unprecedented slump in car
sales. Plus, the switch to electric power now looks like a more
realistic and closer one and the businesses will have to work
out how. But Zac says it is not exactly intimidating him.
“I spent three and a half years in China, so India as a
countr y, as a size, market... it doesn’t over whelm me. I think
coming back to what you said about the electricity, we areA