India: Balkrishna Tyres

Yogesh Mahansaria was still an 18-year-old college student in 1993 when he joined Balkrishna Tyres, his family's failing Bombay scooter tire business. India was deregulating and Balkrishna found it couldn't compete locally, so Mahansaria was encouraged by his uncle to travel the world, attending trade shows to look for a niche export trade. He found it in the highly specialized business of making "off-highway" tires -- that is, tires for agricultural and construction use. It took until 2000 for the family to retool the business, but today Balkrishna is among the fastest-growing small businesses in India. Yogesh Mahansaria, at the tender age of 30, is its chief executive.

Now, Balkrishna has a second, larger factory tucked away in the tiny town of Bhiwadi in India's desert state of Rajasthan. There, Balkrishna Tyres (BKT ) has state-of-the-art, high-tech equipment that churns out 3,500 tires a day in 1,500 styles, from a 3-kg, 12-inch diameter, $10 one with a light, zigzag tread for garden mowers to a 7-foot-diameter tire with diagonal treads used in mining operations that costs up to $2,500. The tires are packed and stored in shipping containers in a modern, 13,500-square-meter warehouse, then sent off to 75 destinations around the world. Sales have jumped from $7.5 million in 2000 to $85 million for the year ending Mar. 31, with profits of $13 million.