Ford sold just 35,000 cars last year, 13 years after it entered India. Its Figo sold 25,000 units in four months — convinced it’s finally figured out the Indian psyche, the company plans a new car every 12-18 months
 Michael Boneham is trying hard to learn Hindi these days. It should ideally have been Tamil, as his workplace for the last three-and-a-half years has been Chennai. But the Ford India MD says while he loves to listen to the “beautiful language”, it’s a bit too formidable for an Australian like him, write Shyamal Majumdar and Swaraj Baggonkar.
“Learning how to say namaste and shukriya has been far easier. Hopefully, I will pick up the rest of the Hindi words before my India stint is over,” Boneham, who has been in India for three-and-a-half years, says with a hearty laugh.
We are at the Coffee Shop at the ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. Boneham wanted an early lunch as he has to catch a flight back to Chennai (he was in Mumbai just for a day to celebrate the mega success of the car maker’s latest offering — Figo) and the Coffee Shop happened to be the only place willing to serve lunch sharp at 12 noon.
His fascination for Indian languages goes much beyond mere linguistic aspirations. “We are a people’s company manufacturing great people’s products, and understanding local languages is a must for an instant connect,” Boneham, who has been out of his home country for 10 years now, says, settling down in the corner table. To be sure, he was no stranger to India even before his current assignment as he had made several trips to the country as Ford’s manufacturing director, Asia Pacific and Africa.
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