From a medical aspirant to the corner office, Tarun Garg leads India's transformation into the Korean automaker's global hub.
30 Oct 2025 | 4521 Views | By Prerna Lidhoo & Ketan Thakkar
On a crisp winter morning in January 2026, when Tarun Garg will walk into Hyundai Motor India’s corporate headquarters as its first-ever Indian Managing Director and CEO, it will be a moment of quiet triumph. For Hyundai, it marks the rise of India from a promising outpost to the beating ...
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On a crisp winter morning in January 2026, when Tarun Garg will walk into Hyundai Motor India’s corporate headquarters as its first-ever Indian Managing Director and CEO, it will be a moment of quiet triumph. For Hyundai, it marks the rise of India from a promising outpost to the beating heart of its global strategy. For Garg, it’s the culmination of a journey that began with failure of the kind that shapes grit.
“Everybody's dream was to make their father happy and Three Idiots came much later,” he laughs, recalling his early years. “My father wanted me to be a doctor, although he is a mathematician. I did not like biology at all, but I did not want to let him down. So I put all my energy into reading biology but my genes were all mathematics. So, I failed.”
That failure, he admits, was a turning point. “I did not qualify for any of the medical entrance exams… But thankfully those days, once you got good marks in 12th, you could get admission into a college.” He ended up in Delhi College of Engineering, studying mechanical engineering and there, among machines and engines, a different dream took root. His father bought him a secondhand Fiat, and Garg remembers how that clunky little car became his classroom.
“Very few people had a car those days. So to that extent, he also knew that I should not feel bad that I had failed him,” he said. On meeting him for the first time, one can guess that Garg embodies the qualities of a modern, quietly assertive leader who blends precision with warmth. Always impeccably dressed and unfailingly punctual, he runs his day from a minimalistic, spotless office in Gurugram that mirrors his structured approach to business.
Beneath his confident smile is a sharp strategic mind and a drive to deliver results without theatrics. “He is a people-first leader who understands that success happens when you treat customers like honoured guests, empower your teams and invest for the long term,” said Unsoo Kim, managing director, HMIL Colleagues and industry insiders often describe him as ambitious yet grounded, a professional who knows how to inspire teams without resorting to hierarchy.
Perhaps that comes from his own journey of rising steadily through the ranks, taking on every role that came his way with an openness to learn. After completing his MBA from IIM Lucknow, Garg joined Maruti Suzuki in logistics. “Logistics is something which probably the bottom rung of your rankers would get,” he recalls candidly. “Maybe the batch was 20, and I was one of those 19th or 20th rankers.” But instead of complaining, he dug in, working with truck drivers, learning invoicing, taxation, dealer allocations and finding dignity in the grind.
That grounding would define Garg’s leadership style: analytical, unpretentious, and people-first. From handling dealers in Lucknow to heading sales and marketing at the country’s largest automaker, he learned early that success in India’s auto market is built in the dusty hinterlands, not just glass towers.
“Dealers in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru already know how to do business. But in UP and MP, I could add a lot of value. Forty percent of my sales were coming from rural areas. With all humility, I would say that was the time when rural sales actually started picking up,” he said. When he moved to Hyundai in 2019 as Director, Sales & Marketing, it was a leap of faith.
He had spent 26 years at Maruti, earning the nickname "Mr. Maruti,” and leaving that cocoon wasn’t easy, made much more difficult by the onset of the pandemic as soon as he joined. Passenger vehicle sales plunged over 13% in the first half of that year, weighed down by weak consumer sentiment, rising vehicle prices, and tight liquidity that dampened overall demand. HMI, like its peers, faced a steep decline in sales during this period.
“Two months after my joining, COVID struck. Can you imagine? I said, My God! What has happened? But that was the defining moment. Hyundai recorded its highestever market share and SUV leadership in 2020 and people moved away from small cars and embraced Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You only live once),” he said.
During his tenure, HMIL achieved record-breaking sales for three consecutive years, posted its highest-ever EBITDA margin in FY24, and executed a landmark 2024 IPO, the largest public offering in the history of India’s equity markets. Again, as Garg is all set to be at the helm of affairs, Hyundai Motor India faces a new set of challenges. For the quarter ended June 2025, net sales fell 5% while net profit dropped nearly 16% quarter-on-quarter, weighed down by tepid domestic demand.
HMIL has slipped to fourth place in the passenger car market, trailing Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and market leader Maruti Suzuki. Meanwhile, aggressive new model launches by rivals have eroded its share, allowing competitors to overtake the oncedominant player.
The company’s current hurdles, however, are precisely the kind of tests that have defined Garg’s career, from navigating tough rural markets early on to steering Hyundai through record-breaking sales and a historic IPO. Also, for someone who once thought he’d failed his father once, Garg has come full circle, leading one of India’s largest automakers at a moment when the country itself is central to Hyundai’s global vision.
“Make in India, made by Indians, and now led by an Indian,” he says, smiling. “I think this is going to bring a very positive change not just for Hyundai, but for how people see us.”