My Tesla India experience

On a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon, I decided to walk in to the Tesla India showroom located at Jio World Drive at BKC, Mumbai. It was my first visit btw.

I was quite surprised, that there was not even a single potential customer for enquiries or for a test drive. 

Given that the BKC is a second CBD in city, perhaps it is understandable that the working executives are not around.

The showroom was opened to the public in July 2025 amidst a huge PR exercise. Elon Musk was conspicuously absent for the India launch at the time. 

However, Bloomberg last week reported that Tesla India is sitting on over 50% unsold inventory which have already been brought in to India last year.

Inside the showroom, the staff member, Mr. Zaheer was very keen and forthcoming to showcase the car to me.  He took personal interest to understand my needs and explained it all to me.

He was also kind enough to take me for a spin all the way up to the Sealink toll and we took a U-turn there. 

Pretty nice experience, I must say. Especially being a co-pax., which I chose to be. Just to understand what my family would feel sitting in there. 

The cabin is extremely spacious. 

As Steve Jobs would say, Design is not how it look, rather how it works. Folks at Tesla seem to have got everything right indeed, in terms of the design feature of everything inside the vehicle. 

State taxes seem to be a killer, according to the numbers Zaheer showed me. 

Road Taxes for key states are as below;

• Telangana: INR 14,24,892
• Karnataka: INR 717,989
• Tamil Nadu: INR 7,060

Isn’t it amazing that the that one state charges 200 times of another! Welcome to the crazy Indian taxation system.

So, the on-road price, if I were to take the Tesla Model Y to Chennai, I would have to spend INR 69 Lakhs ++.

The price is jacked up mainly because India imposes 100% import duty on vehicles that are neither made or assembled in the country. This was the main reason for the US-India Tariff wars around the summer of 2025. 

On the other hand, if I were to use the same INR 70 lakhs, I could probably buy not one, but 3 top-end EVs as below;

• Mahindra 9E: INR 31 lakhs (approx)
• Tata Safari EV: INR 31 lakhs (approx)
• MG Comet: INR 10 lakh (approx)
• Total: INR 72 lakhs

Given the “international badging” and the after sales support, many Indian consumers seem to be weary of the situation to invest on a Tesla in India. 

What’s your take on buying a Tesla? 

Would you go for it, especially if you are in Mumbai? And would you rather buy buy 1 EV instead of three? Would be keen to know your views. 

PS: The visit to Tesla showroom coincided with my ongoing year long Leadership Course at Harvard Business School.

2025: The year that was…

It was a lonely night on 31 Dec. ’24. I was laid off from my previous role 2 months ago and had been wondering what should I do in the coming months. 

Wanted to go on a long pan-India drive, but didn’t have enough to cover expenses for 3 weeks. Thought of a few start-up ideas that would work in the post-Covid, quick commerce era, but Capital & subsequent scaling was a concern. 

After struggling to attend half a dozen interviews for senior management roles, I realised that the market for CXO roles was not just shrinking. 

It was also getting clear that the closures were happening through references to the Chairman’s / MDs Office from within smaller circles.

I had two choices – to go through the arduous route of connecting with top CXOs within the Retail Industry one by one and seek their support. The other one was to take the “miles” less travelled. 

In the pre-Interval scene of his 2024 outing Jailer, Superstar Rajinikanth would sit down on a chair, slowly turn his face, smile and utter his next steps. 

Similarly, I said it to myself – if I do not get an assured Offer Letter by 15th Jan. ’25, then I would get back to the road less travelled – Independent Consulting. I had bootstrapped Miles2Go Consulting, a boutique Advisory firm in Aug. 2014.

In no time, I was already servicing two prestigious clients, one a 25-year old global FMCG brand at Bangalore and another one - a Fahion behemoth backed with over 50 years’ legacy of the Promoters.

Fashion and FMCG continue to be the two key verticals within organised retail that I am most passionate about in Consulting.

I began my road and rail travel across states and was giving my best, learning every day about the vast ocean that is Retailing, one SKU at a time.

 

In a sudden & unexpected turn of events, I managed to get placed as a “Partner” to be based in Bangalore at one of the Global Consulting & Advisory firms in the world. 

The annual take home package was an exciting 8-figure salary to build from scratch and lead their Retail Practice in the Indian sub-continent. It sounded surreal and I was overjoyed.

After sending the “offer letter” at 2pm on Friday signed by none other than the Chairperson of the Firm, which was after a month of deliberations, discussions and several rounds of interviews, the Firm decided to retract the offer given to me the following Monday!

I was stunned. Sugar levels trebled. Blood pressure shot up. Irregular bowels, coupled with sleep pattern disturbances and a general loss of interest in life led me to several disturbing days and nights. Was being pushed to border-line depression. 

The world came sinking. Not because I lost a job. Not because of someone invalidating my credentials based on hearsay and rumours. 

But the fact that there was zero-professionalism left in several corporates in the garb of international firms, which I have seen one after the other.

A bit of solo-travel and short-bursts of temple visits during April 2025 helped. 

I spent a lot of time alone, speaking less, reading more and articulating more than ever, what was being said and between the words. 

Thanks to a bunch of well-wishers and close friends, I was pushed to restart my Advisory firm – “Miles2Go Consulting Services” – M2G which was on a break since 2022.

And not just to start, those around me suggested that I build the “Practice” along with a team, rather than living and dying as an Independent consultant supported by associated off and on. 

When I mooted the idea to a few other professionals, they too advised that I take this up in a bigger way and lo-behold, on 1st April 2025, I began Ver. 2.0 of M2G.

This time, it was going to be a planned approach on scaling. A crafted, chiselled one, rather. With a clear Vision, surrounded by a bunch of passionate professionals.

First was to decide how will we be different from our earlier avatar, when Shriram and M2G were intertwined and the names simply replaced each other. In Ver. 2.0, I told myself, that shouldn’t be the case. 

M2G should be a team and the outcome should also be credited to the team. 

While I would remain hands-on in every project, I would take a back seat in the day today operations.

Then, I set about to focus on the five key verticals that we would focus on in 2025 – Retail Leasing, Hiring, Training, PR Strategy + Offline / Events Execution. Know more about us here.

These are areas I have chosen to remain afar since I began Consulting in 2014. 

We felt that these could not just bring in additional revenues, but would also provide us with a bigger reach to newer clients and a larger world out there.

On 31st August 2025, we organised our first public event at Spencers Plaza to celebrate the “Madras Formation Day”, now celebrated over a month.

What was most unexpected was the office space we landed upon. 

I have been infamous for not taking my parents advice seriously since childhood, however this time I decided to cold-call at a large office complex as suggested by Dad. 

I was lucky that the place was not only available, but I was able to finalise the place and move-in within a record time. A fully furnished 2,500 sq ft A-grade office in the heart of the city at Mylapore, Chennai.

On the auspicious Vijaya Dasami Day 2025, my parents performed the office pujas and we started working from there since then. 

The team size slowly began to increase, even as knowledgeable and passionate people from their domains agreed to give me a try and to join my team. 

It’s been a good three months in the new office and I cannot thank my personal and professional family enough for their unstinted support all these months.

As we speak, we are serving half a dozen clients across Business Strategy, Hiring & Training, with a team size of 40 members. 

Whenever I sit in my chair, it sounds surreal. This is not what I had vaguely dreamt about 365 days ago. But God had other plans, after all.

As I say every morning when I wake up, “We have just begun. We have Miles To Go…” 

Do drop by our office and encourage us to do more. We are located here.

Life of a Consultant

 Monday musings. 

This one cracked me up, cartoon by Sunil Agarwal in The Times Of India  newspaper dt 29 Sep. ‘25  

While it was my B-School dream to work for one of the top Consulting firms, destiny had other plans for me even as I run my owm firm on its 11th year, quite successfully. 

Till date, several employees of our Clients feel that we are really NOT required for their Organisation and that they could do well by themselves 

How could they be told, I wonder that Consultants (and not just us) are brought in for a purpose and not because Business Owners or Boards of Directors are floating with extra cash! 

In fact, we are the last to be paid, after their Bankers, external Creditors, employees, themselves, key Vendors, etc. in that order. 

NO - this cartoon is NOT funny. 

Whether it is McKinsey & Company or Miles2Go Consulting Services  - we are hired for a reason. And with a conviction by Business Owners. 

And Clients mostly hire us for interventional Consulting, to solve specific, short-term business challenges and not to hang around like employees and office furniture for a lifetime.  

So, whether you work for Accenture or Bain & Company or Boston Consulting Group (BCG) , EY-Parthenon or KPMG India or run your own little boutique Consulting firm - we stand together on our purpose to bring a visible, measurable and positive change for our Clients within a defined timeframe. 

Proud to be a living, working and running my firm as a Consultant with a sizeable team, notwithstanding this admonishment that is supposedly (not so) humourous!