AT THE HEART OF everything Lakshmi Venu does at TAFE — the 66-year-old, family-run tractor behemoth — is the indelible influence of Japanese professor Yoshikazu Tsuda. Nearly 20 years ago, Lakshmi was a fresh graduate when she got to work closely with Tsuda, a proponent of Total Quality Management (TQM), which focusses on continuous improvement, employee involvement, and customer satisfaction to deliver high-quality products and services. Those lessons are still intact at TAFE, India’s second-largest tractor maker after Mahindra. “My trained DNA is customer-first because professor Tsuda mentored me,” she tells Fortune India. “The first five years of my career saw his immense mentorship.”

That steadfast focus is her cornerstone at TAFE, which holds the rights to the Massey Ferguson brand in India. The daughter of Mallika Srinivasan, the chairman & MD of TAFE, and Venu Srinivasan, the chairman emeritus of 115-year-old TVS Motor Company and TVS Holdings, Lakshmi joined TAFE in 2023 as director and rose to become its vice chairman by 2025, following the TVS family’s succession plan finalised a year before.

Lakshmi is also the MD of Sundaram Clayton, the ₹2,100-crore auto components maker, and divides her time equally between the two companies. According to the 2024 succession plan, Lakshmi would follow her mother in leading TAFE, founded in 1960 by her maternal grandfather as a joint venture between Massey Ferguson (part of the AGCO Group) and the Chennai-based Amalgamations Group, while her brother Sudarshan Venu would oversee TVS Motor. The 80-year-old Amalgamations Group is one of India’s largest light engineering groups, comprising 40 companies that make everything from diesel engines to automobile components, and even owns Higginbothams Pvt. Ltd.

In 1974, TAFE and AGCO entered into a trademark agreement for limited tractors. In 1994, the agreement was expanded, granting TAFE the exclusive right to use the Massey Ferguson brand name for its tractor operations in India. Following the collaboration, TAFE invested in design, manufacturing, and quality control, and in the process, built the Massey Ferguson brand, growing from just about 300 tractors annually to over 100,000. “If I look at TAFE’s culture, it has my grandfather’s DNA, which is engineering excellence at its core,” Lakshmi says. In 2005, TAFE acquired the Tractors, Engines and Transmissions business of Eicher through wholly owned subsidiary TAFE Motors and Tractors Ltd. In 2018, TAFE acquired the Serbian tractor and agricultural equipment brand IMT (Industrija Mašina i Traktora). Today, TAFE is the single largest shareholder in AGCO, the third-largest farm equipment maker in the world, after Deere & Company and CNH.

Holding steady

Notably, Massey Ferguson, the same brand that helped TAFE grow, played a defining role in Lakshmi’s three years at the company. She steered the tractor maker through a renewed phase following a settled dispute with AGCO, which owns the Massey Ferguson brand globally.

Much of the trouble began after a leadership change at AGCO in 2020. Questions raised over some investments made by AGCO, in which TAFE had become the largest investor, led to friction between the partners. AGCO, in return, began questioning TAFE’s right to use the Massey Ferguson brand in India.

That led AGCO to terminate an agreement with TAFE to manufacture and sell the Massey Ferguson brand in April 2024, prompting a legal battle. “This decision followed extensive discussions with TAFE over multiple years concerning TAFE’s continued poor operational performance as a supplier, brand licensee and distributor to AGCO, as well as TAFE’s continued lack of focus on AGCO customers in several key markets,” AGCO had said then.

Soon came TAFE’s response in a detailed letter to AGCO shareholders. The Indian firm criticised AGCO’s strategic direction, citing missed market opportunities, failed acquisitions, and rising costs. “As TAFE’s strategic influence increased, rather than addressing issues plaguing AGCO that have repeatedly called attention to, including flaws with AGCO’s corporate governance, wholly inadequate engagement with shareholder and financial and operational performance in key areas, AGCO sought to stifle TAFE’s ability to seek changes through contentious and ill-advised moves with respect to brand usage that has for over six decades been an uncontested area,” TAFE had stated.

By February 2025, the Madras High Court decided to maintain status quo, permitting TAFE’s interim use of the Massey Ferguson brand in India until the ownership issue was sorted. By July, both companies reached an amicable settlement — TAFE bought back 20.7% of its equity from AGCO for $260 million (nearly ₹2,300 crore) in September 2025, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of the Amalgamations Group. Concurrently, TAFE would continue to retain its 16.3% stake in AGCO and participate in future buyback programmes to maintain its proportionate ownership. It had to also forego its board nomination rights, vote its AGCO shares in line with the management, and abstain from activism. The brand ownership of Massey Ferguson now rests with TAFE for India, Nepal, and Bhutan.

With the Massey Ferguson deal firmly in place, Lakshmi has her eyes set on taking TAFE into a high-growth period. Currently, TAFE operates four tractor brands — Massey Ferguson, TAFE, Eicher Tractors, and IMT — and exports tractors to more than 80 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Russia. Yet, the market share growth has only been modest, with the company selling about 214,000 units annually. According to Crisil, TAFE had a market share of 18% in 9MFY26, only behind M&M’s 44%. “The group’s market position is backed by its strong brand and presence in the lower and medium horsepower (HP) segments (30-50 HP), frequent model launches, and a wide market reach through a vast network spanning more than 1,600 dealers and 2,000 sales outlets across India,” the ratings agency states.

Reimagining its future

Today, more than 60% of TAFE’s volumes come from the 41-50 HP segment. The segment volume grew by more than 13% over the past five years, mostly driven by the implementation of stricter TREM-IV emission norms. This resulted in a 15-20% price hike of higher HP tractors, especially those above 51 HP. That has made the 41-50 HP segment more attractive. Recent GST cuts have also helped boost sales, pushing them to a record high in FY26.

Lakshmi believes that rural India has changed in multiple ways over the past five-six years. “I think the first and foremost has been digital connectivity because it has brought global trends to the Indian village. The second is, there was significant population movement during Covid-19. Many returned from the city to rural India... they brought a wider perspective on different ways of doing business.”

She says Indian agriculture is in a good place. “War aside, we have had benefits. The GST [cut] has helped. The nature of the Indian farmer has changed significantly. He is not that old Indian farmer who lived in a very different context from his urban counterparts.” Her company is now gearing up to acquire agritech startups while doubling down on international operations. In 2024, the company signed a deal with German engine manufacturer Deutz to make engines in India. “Exports are a big area of focus for growth,” Lakshmi says. “Farm equipment is the other area of growth in the medium-to-long term because maturity is coming into the market, where apart from tractors pulling basic implements, high-tech implements are also becoming important.”

“My mother and grandfather also believed that intellectual property (IP) should be ours. We should innovate in India. The way I interpret that passion is, if the IP is ours, you innovate in India for the world today,” Lakshmi says. She aims to marry this belief with professor Tsuda’s principle. “When you combine customer centricity with your own IP, you can start strong in terms of an Indian company going overseas. So, if you look at Europe or Turkey, any of these markets where we have gone under our own brand recently, we have started with a particular segment, a very calibrated entry strategy, but those segments have done very well in just two years.”

With AGCO laying off from TAFE’s operations in India, the company has a firmer footing to fight on. The prospects look good. The assembly elections in major agrarian states, combined with the GST rate cuts, may result in India’s tractor market seeing a good run this fiscal. But a lower-than-expected rainfall and geopolitical uncertainties may hurt farm incomes, and in turn, TAFE, whose tractors account for about 90% of the group’s revenue, with the balance coming from engine sales and service, gears and engineering plastic components, among others. But the account book looks promising. “The TAFE group has superior liquidity driven by robust cash generating ability of more than ₹1,800 crore per annum and sizeable cash surplus of around ₹7,600 crore as on September 30, 2025,” Crisil states. “[The] company will continue to be debt-free due to modest capex and working capital requirements, which will be funded entirely through accruals. Further, the group has substantial liquid investment in AGCO, valued at ₹13,000 crore as of January 2026.”

So, where does TAFE go from here now? “We are open to collaborations and acquisitions because if you look at our industry, nobody can do everything on their own,” Lakshmi says. “It’s about how you partner. But for us, bringing value in terms of technology is a keystone to our collaborations.” The Lakshmi era at TAFE is only getting started.