Executive chairman Enki Tan is revving up Giti Tire to enter the global top ten ranks as a major supplier to the world’s EV makers.
It was a clear September morning in Northern Germany when Chinese EV giant BYD’s electric hypercar Yangwang U9 Xtreme blasted to a record speed of 496.22 kmph at the ATP Papenburg test track, beating the 2019 record of 490.48 kmph clocked by Bugatti’s Chiron Super Sport 300+ to become the fastest production model on the planet. A month earlier, the U9X lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife’s “Green Hell,” the 21-kilometer mountain circuit through Germany’s Eifel forest notorious for 300 meters of elevation shifts and over 70 turns, in under seven minutes, a record for an electric vehicle.
Under the machine’s nearly 2.5-tonne body, and connected to four electric motors, each capable of a rotational speed of 30,000 rpm to deliver over 3,000 horsepower, was a set of semi-slick GitiSport eGTR2 Pro tires. The high-performance wheels showcased the latest technology from Giti Tire, the Singapore-headquartered manufacturer that’s been quietly cornering the global market for EV tires.
BYD’s electric hypercar Yangwang U9 Xtreme, fitted with GitiSport eGTR2 Pro tires, set the record speed for the fastest production model on the planet.
Courtesy of Giti
The pro tires, built for ultra-high speeds and responsiveness in extreme motoring conditions, are a culmination of two decades of investment in tire innovation and design, spearheaded by Giti’s 57-year-old executive chairman Enki Tan, a medical doctor-turned-auto executive. Since joining the company’s listed Chinese unit in 2003 as executive director and taking the top group job seven years later, Tan has transformed Giti from a regional player into a global heavyweight, selling its tires in over 130 countries.
“If you go to Bhutan, you’ll see our tires. If you go to New Zealand, you’ll see our tires,” says Tan, in an exclusive interview with Forbes Asia in Jakarta in October, adding that he even bet with a friend on a trip to Iceland that they’d spot Giti’s tires while there (they did).
Industry publication Tyrepress, ranks the company as the world’s 15th largest tiremaker by sales. With $3.1 billion in revenue for 2024, Giti has manufacturing capacity to roll out over 100 million tires annually for conventional gas-powered cars as well as EVs, motorcycles, trucks and buses from five factories, three in China and one each in the U.S. and Indonesia, the country from where it draws its roots (see “Long Haul” at the bottom of the page).
GLOBAL GIANTS
Household names like Michelin and Bridgestone dominate the industry, but a group of rising Asian tiremakers are catching up.
Figures converted from euros
Source: Tyrepress
Now Tan says he’s ready to take the company further, driving it back into the tire industry’s top ten where France’s Michelin and Japan’s Bridgestone have long topped the leaderboard. (Giti briefly cracked the elite ranks in 2015.) It’s a tall order: the company will need to pump up substantially to overtake the industry’s current No. 10, Chinese tiremaker Sailun Group with $4.9 billion in sales and capacity to produce 140 million tires annually.
“Giti will probably hit its target of becoming one of the top ten tire manufacturers in the world. The only question is how long will it take them to get there.”
Tan is counting on Giti’s technical capabilities to capture more customers. “To just build factories and start pushing products in the market doesn’t work anymore. Those brands that can build [their technology] and be in the key markets, and with key growth partners, will be the ones that survive,” he says.
While typically not headline-grabbing, the act of driving, from acceleration and braking to stability and control, relies on the humble tire, the only part of a car that touches the road, points out Tan. By his estimates, he’s spent over $2 billion in the past five years on both R&D and manufacturing sites to produce tires that meet an increasingly complex range of requirements for passenger and commercial vehicles. From givens like safety and durability to next-gen must-haves like energy efficiency and smart monitoring through sensors embedded in the tires. Tan explains that their sensors measure eight variables such as tire pressure and temperature to assess wear and tear.
A Giti Tire factory in China.
Courtesy of Giti
Giti owes its tech prowess to the 800 engineers working at its four far-flung research centers in China, Germany, Indonesia and the U.S. “Most people don’t understand tires,” says Tan. “I have people telling me, ‘Hey, they’re very easy to make. You just pour the rubber inside the mold and then the tire comes out.’ It’s not so easy.”
Take the U9X hypercar. Giti proposed over 30 tire designs, says Yan Feng, head of Yangwang Research Institute at BYD’s R&D division, by email. “To achieve world records in both top speed and lap time on such an extreme vehicle, close collaboration with a tire supplier is essential.” Given their long-time association of over two decades, Giti was “the clear choice” for the project, he adds, elaborating that the tire they jointly developed used a heat-resistant fiber of high-tensile strength to ensure stability at high speeds. Even the smallest irregularity or wear in the tires “can significantly impact vehicle speed and safety,” says Feng.
For Tan, the project put Giti through its paces and proved that “we can produce a product way beyond [a tire’s] daily application. You can imagine the forces in turning a corner at 300 kilometers an hour,” he notes. “This is interesting because it also intersects with EVs.” Unlike tires in conventional cars, EV tires require a higher load index (EVs are heavier than their gas-engine counterparts), low rolling resistance (the less energy used, the greater the driving range) and optimized tread patterns (for both traction and to reduce road noise).
His bet on making Giti an EV tire specialist to accelerate growth couldn’t be better timed. Worldwide, the number of electric cars hitting the road is increasing every year; EVs accounted for a fifth of global car sales in 2024, compared with 18% the previous year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). China has raced ahead as the biggest EV market, thanks partly to government subsidies, racking up sales of over 11 million electric vehicles, or nearly two-thirds of the total global market.
EV BOOM
Gobal EV sales gained momentum in the past five years, with China accounting for two-thirds of the 2024 total.
Source: International Energy Agency
Over the past decade, EV tires have become Giti’s fastest-growing business and the one with the most potential, says Tan. More than half of the 300 original equipment manufacturer (OEM) car models it supplies are EVs, per the company’s recent Singapore Exchange filing for a S$750 million ($579 million) bond offering. Achieving that traction is thanks to a long-term view that led Giti from its comfortable position as a tire supplier to Japanese automakers in Indonesia to tie up over 20 years ago with Chinese carmaker Chery Automobile to make tires for its popular QQ City series of compact cars.
“We’ve been selling EV tires…since the beginning of EV manufacturing in China,” says Tan. Being in the right place at the right time saw Giti snag its first EV tire contract with BYD in 2010, expanding its seven–year-long association with the carmaker, initially as a supplier of tires for its gas-engine cars. Today Giti is a leading OEM tire supplier for EVs in China and counts Geely Auto, XPeng and NIO among its customers. China, in turn, is the biggest EV manufacturing hub in the world, making up more than 70% of global production, according to the IEA.
That focus on the Chinese EV market could be Giti’s ticket to move up the ladder in terms of global market share, says David Shaw, CEO of London-based consultancy Tire Industry Research. “Giti will probably hit its target of becoming one of the top ten tire manufacturers in the world,” he adds. “The only question is how long will it take them to get there.”
Giti’s EV push comes as leading tiremakers—Michelin, Bridgestone, Goodyear and Continental Tires—are ceding market share to other players, such as Giti, South Korea’s Hankook Tire & Technology and Japan’s Yokohama Rubber, whose high-tech factories can make quality tires comparatively cheaply, says Shaw. Giti’s aim to be among the global top ten is “perfectly possible because the big names are struggling,” he adds. (Giti’s senior management team includes executives from Michelin.) Tan’s multiple sightings of Giti on his travels are partly due to his efforts to make it a recognized brand around the world. The company tied up this year with Volkswagen, in which the two kitted out the German carmaker’s electric van ID. Buzz with GitiSynergy H2 tires for an 80,000 kilometer journey through 75 countries that began in September in Hanover. The expedition, which aims to set a new Guinness World Record for visiting the most countries in one journey in an EV on a single set of tires, will be yet another gruelling test of Giti’s tires. As Shaw says, “Giti is sending out the message that our technology is good.”
Volkswagen’s ID. Buzz electric van aims to set a record by traveling through 75 countries, spanning 80,000 kilometers, on one set of GitiSynergy H2 tires.
Courtesy of Giti
Tan’s multiple sightings of Giti on his travels are partly due to his efforts to make it a recognized brand around the world. The company tied up this year with Volkswagen, in which the two kitted out the German carmaker’s electric van ID. Buzz with GitiSynergy H2 tires for an 80,000 kilometer journey through 75 countries that began in September in Hanover. The expedition, which aims to set a new Guinness World Record for visiting the most countries in one journey in an EV on a single set of tires, will be yet another gruelling test of Giti’s tires. As Shaw says, “Giti is sending out the message that our technology is good.”
Tan, who grew up in Kuala Lumpur—he remains a Malaysian citizen—says he’s always been passionate about cars. His family owned a car repair shop but an interest in biology led Tan to study medicine at the University of Sydney. After graduating in 1992, he spent the next six years working as an anaesthesiologist in hospitals in Australia, Hong Kong and Malaysia, before he switched gears to earn an M.B.A. from MIT in 2000.
Both experiences have helped him navigate challenges at Giti, explains Tan: “In medicine, you always need to know the root cause of any problem. In business, you also need to know the root cause. If you don’t know the root cause, you’re only treating the symptoms, and the company will not grow because you haven’t fixed the underlying problem.”
A few years after joining Giti, Tan, by then executive director for international sales, began visiting automakers across Asia, Europe and the U.S. to pitch Giti tires. While the OEM market is smaller than the tire-replacement market, which makes up the bulk of tire sales, Yash Agarwal, an auto equities analyst at Gurugram, India-based Nirmal Bang Securities, says the OEM segment offers a much longer runway for a tiremaker, providing an opportunity to collaborate on tire design with an auto company and seed potential higher-margin replacement sales.
Enki Tan at Giti Tires’ Singapore warehouse.
Munster Cheong for Forbes Asia
Tan recalls drawn-out negotiations for an OEM contract with a big German carmaker. The vetting process took years and required Giti to undergo frequent audits to ensure compliance with strict manufacturing standards before it landed the contract. Tan says that gaining the trust of one major manufacturer opens the doors to building other relationships. “The only other brand you see [besides the car itself] is the tire. So you are automatically representing the car brand. They have to trust that you can deliver.”
Among his pitstops was South Carolina, an American auto manufacturing hub. Giti, which has been exporting tires to the U.S., one of the world’s biggest tire markets, since 2005, opened a 158,000-square-meter factory and R&D center in Chester County in 2017. Today it churns out around 5 million tires a year, making up a quarter of the tires the company sells in the U.S. (The rest are still imported from Indonesia.)
While acknowledging the $560 million buildout cost more than a factory with similar capacity in Asia, he says it was a way to strengthen ties with Giti’s American customers and reduce supply chain risks—a forward-thinking move, as it turns out, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports into the U.S., including goods from China and Indonesia. “We built it just in time,” Tan says, adding that the unit helps to demonstrate Giti’s commitment to the U.S. market.
Yet Giti’s home turf in Asia holds the most promise for future growth, in particular China, the world’s largest car market with 31 million vehicles sold in 2024. In the first half of 2025, China made up about 44% of Giti’s total sales, followed by Indonesia at 26%, the company says. Growth in the global tire market will be driven by Asia-Pacific, says Nirmal Bang’s Agarwal, noting headwinds in Europe and the U.S., where car prices have increased significantly and interest rates remain elevated.According to New York-based TechSci Research, China’s tire market will nearly double in size to $102 billion in 2030 from $55 billion in 2024. That’s about half of the global total, which is expected to hit $240 billion by the end of the decade, growing at a compound annual rate of nearly 11%. In anticipation, this year Giti opened its first production line at its new factory in Anhui province, a car manufacturing center in eastern China, with plans to ramp up to full production capacity of close to 23 million tires by 2027.
The only other brand you see besides the car itself is the tire.
For Giti to crack the industry’s top ten, it needs to have better relationships with the top automakers as well as increase its exposure to EV and SUV tires, says Agarwal. “Only then will they be able to have a higher top-line growth as compared to normal mid-single-digit growth that we are expecting in the tire industry.” For the past three years, Giti has clocked a modest compound annual sales growth of 7.6%.
Among the speed bumps Giti faces as it revs up, is a shortage of natural rubber amid high demand for the key material used in tires, alongside competitive pricing between brands as tiremakers jostle for an edge in a crowded marketplace. While rubber futures on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, a benchmark in global rubber trade, have dipped slightly since the start of the year, prices are up 80% since 2020. Overall, roughly half of Giti’s revenue in the past three years was spent on raw materials, including rubber, nylon, polyester cord, steel wire and carbon powder.
To mitigate the impact of costlier inputs on profitability, the company has centralized purchasing to secure bulk rates for materials, sourced from a global network of multiple suppliers. It’s also recently introduced a new tire prototype, which it claims is made mostly of sustainable materials, including recycled rubber and plastic bottles. The efforts are paying off: Giti’s net profit in 2024 climbed over 80% to $129 million from $71 million the year before.
Looking down the road, Tan notes that tire technology has to keep pace with a fast-evolving market where products “are getting better and better.” But he cautions: “You cannot just sell the product, you have to serve the customer so that they see other value propositions…and trust in your brand.” —With additional reporting by Jonathan Burgos and Gloria Haraito
LONG HAUL
Giti traces its roots to a small maker of bicycle tires in Jakarta called Hock Thay Hin, which was founded in 1951. The company changed its name to Gajah Tunggal, with Indonesian tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim, son of a rubber trader, as one of its founders. (Tan is married to Cherie, Nursalim’s youngest daughter. And Giti’s elephant logo ties in with gajah, the Indonesian word for elephant.) Over the next decades, the family expanded the business, making tires for motorcycles, then cars, trucks and other vehicles from its factory in Indonesia, including for companies such as Japan’s Inoue Rubber with which it forged a strategic alliance.
In 1993, Giti Tire (Singapore) was established as the group’s private holding company and the same year, the group entered China with an investment in a car and truck tire factory in Anhui province. Today, it’s controlled through Giti Holdings, held by the family. (Giti maintains an interest in the Indonesian tire operations through a 49.5% stake in Gajah Tunggal). A decade later Giti boosted its China play with the purchase of a 44% stake in Shanghai-listed tiremaker Hualin Tyre, since renamed Giti Tire Corp. In 2004, Gajah Tunggal signed an agreement to make tires for Michelin, which in turn acquired a 10% stake in the Jakarta-listed company. Nursalim appears at No. 29 on this year’s list of Indonesia’s 50 richest with a net worth of $2.8 billion, which he shares with his family.
