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June 1975. Inside the medieval black-lava stone Gothic cathedral that soars over the skyline of the industrial town of Clermont-Ferrand, one of France’s oldest urban settlements, an unlikely visitor sat motionless in a front pew. It could be that the bespectacled, 40-something man, incongruous in his brown skin, was taking refuge from the oppressive summer heat, but there was something in the attenuated way he held himself that suggested he was there as a supplicant. Neither the church deacons nor the groups of tourists slowly making their way around the nave, however, could have guessed what the man was praying for.

It was true that Maruti Vinayak Gokarn (MVG), for that was the man’s name, was more than a little anxious. Over the past several years, he had nurtured a dream of setting up his own engineering company in India to manufacture tyre valves, a critical component in motor vehicles. And now that dream had reached a critical juncture.

MVG had his reasons for choosing tyre valves as his project. At that time, only one Indian company, a joint venture between the world leader, Schrader Scovill Duncan Ltd, and the JP Goenka Group, manufactured the component, so there was ample room for...

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