Multinationals from China, India, Brazil, Russia, and even Egypt are coming on strong. They're hungry-and want your customers. They're changing the global game.

Like other residents of southern Mississippi, Jami Lucenberg, 35, faced a huge cleanup job last fall in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. he needed a tractor fast to clear debris and trees from his 17-acre family farm, just 16 miles north of devistated Biloxi. "we literally had to cut our way up and down the blacktop roads," recalls Lucenberg.

But rather than buy an American-made John Deere or New Holland, brands he grew up with, Lucenberg chose a shiny red Mahindra 5500 made by India's Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. "I have have been around equipment all my life," says Lucenberg, who also used the tractor to earn extra money clearing destroyed homes along the Gulf Coast. But for $27,000, complete with a front loader, the 54-hp Mahindra "is by far the best for the money. It has more power and heavier steel," Lucenberg says. "When you lock it into four-wheel drive, you can move 3,000 pounds like nothing. That thing's an animal." The local dealership in nearby Saucier, Miss. (population 1,300), figures it has sold 300 Mahindra's in the past four months.
Surprised that a company from India is penetrating a U.S. market long dominated by venerable names like Deere & Co.' Then it's time to take a look at how globalization has come full circle.

Boston Consulting Group has identified 100 emerging-market companies that have the potential to reach the top rank of global corporations. From a variety of industries, here are 25 players and their strategies:
Mahindra & Mahindra, India, Tractors/Autos, Revenues $2.9 billion, Strategy is to establish primacy at home, expand in neighboring nations, then move to the West.

How can Western multinationals respond' The first step is to begin respecting the new competition. That is the attitude David C. Everitt, president of Deere's $10.5 billion agricultural division, is adapting toward Mahindra. Everitt concedes the Indian rival could someday pass Deere in global unit sales. Mahindra dominates the Indian market, which is bigger even than the America's, and is especially strong in the small tractors that account for two-thirds of U.S. sales. But Deere also is picking up its game by, among other things, boosting R&D in higher-end tractors for mega-farms in the U.S.' Europe, and Brazil, and expanding its own production in India and elsewhere. "We are not afraid of competition," Everitt says. "It gets the juices going and helps us find ways to be better."

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