The current decade has witnessed a huge spurt in automotive component exports from India thanks to increasing focus on technology and R&D
For Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), India has become a major exporting country not only for finished vehicles but also for components. The company has been exporting their wide range of CVs produced from its Chennai plant to around 50 countries. It also achieved a major milestone by exporting 2 million parts of high quality to the world. These remarks were made by Satyakam Arya, the Managing Director and CEO of Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, while delivering his inaugural address at INTEC 2022 exhibition organised by CODISSIA, Coimbatore.
According to Arya, even though India’s GDP growth of 8.7% is far ahead of all other countries in the world, there is a huge potential to increase the exports of automobiles and today we have only a single-digit market share out of the global export volume. According to him, the next decade will be for technology and it will be built on innovation mainly with the support of MSMEs. Currently there are 6 crore MSMEs in India contributing 6% to GDP growth. They are the third-highest contributor for manufacturing GDP. There are 12 crore people employed in the MSME sector, which is 10% of our population. Hence, MSMEs are the backbone of Indian economy.
The contribution of the MSMEs is very vital for India to become USD 5 trillion economy. Arya also spoke about the increasing focus on digitalization and skilling and the need for MSMEs to be bold and courageous. “MSMEs should also understand the customers’ requirements first before developing any products,” Arya said. While referring to DICV’s 10-year successful journey, Arya pointed out that with 90% localisation of the company’s flagship vehicle BharatBenz the focus remains on the delivery of safety, comfort and reliable products. He also praised the management of CODISSIA, calling them the flag-bearers for SMEs’ growth in South India.