Tesla India Policy Exec Quits After India Entry is Put on Hold
Manuj Khurana, policy and business development executive at Tesla in India played a key role in forming a domestic market-entry plan for the company in India.

One of Tesla India’s crucial employees has quit the company, just a few weeks after the electric car manufacturers decided to put their entry to the Indian market on hold. The government of India and the representatives of Tesla have been having a lot of back and forth over the past few months as the company have been looking to initiate operations in the country.

It seemed like it was finally going to happen, but a few weeks, all of a sudden, Tesla India announced that they have pressed pause on the process and have taken a step back from the decision. Just a few weeks after that, Mr. Manuj Khurana who was the policy and business development executive of the company announced that he will be leaving the company.

Mr. Khurana was hired by Tesla India on March 2021 and has played an instrumental role in lobbying the South Asian government so that they can enter the market and even was paramount in formulating a local market entry strategy for the company in India.

The government of India set the import tax for Tesla at 100% which was too much for the company to set up their operations and sales in the country. Due to this, the company started lobbying the government of the country, which was headed by Mr. Khurana to slash those rates down to 40% which would then make it viable for the company to enter the Indian market and begin their operations. As the company recently opened up their manufacturing plant in China, they were planning to import their electric cars South into India.

However, the Indian government have already told the representatives of Tesla that they have to set up a manufacturing plant in the country if they want to enter the market and sell their electric cars in India. They have been unwavering with their decision even though Tesla have been communicating with them and trying to get the import tax down instead.

Mr. Khurana has been working hard to get the government to reduce the import tax rate for months now and now that the company decided to put all of this on hold, his work has all gone in vain. Some employees of the Indian team have been put in to other groups and their search for the right location for a showroom has been scrapped.

One of the sources close to the company said that the company’s goals of launching in India can be considered to be dead.