Auto industry witnessing big boom

Chennai, Nov 13: Mr K Ravi, Regional Sales Director, India and SAARC, Automotive Aftermarket, MICO Bosch today said auto, auto components and auto servicing industry have been witnessing a big boom in the recent past and stressed the need for training manpower in the auto servicing sector.

India produces over 1.2 million cars a year and the number is expected to increase to 4.2 millions by 2010. As a result, the auto component and auto servicing industry, is growing at around 20 per cent, he said taking part in the three-day Exhibition "Auto Serv 2006", being organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), here. "The focus must be on training the manpower in the auto servicing sector. This must be one of the primary responsibilities of car owners," Mr Ravi said. He said with the advent of new car models and technology, the service segment was becoming more and more specialised.

Internationally, electronic components accounted for over 40 per cent of the automotive components with respect to cars. Hence there was an urgent need to create a sophisticated auto servicing industry. Though the car companies were already training the mechanics employed at their dealers' network, they must come forward to create trained mechanics even outside their network, Mr Ravi suggested. Mr Ajit Singh, Executive Director, Elgi Equipments Ltd, said the main driver for the growth of the auto servicing industry was the changing face of the garage industry. "With the customers demanding faster and quality service of their vehicles, the garage industry is getting more and more sophisticated.

Currently, India has over 2000 sophisticated car garages," he said. Pointing out that the garage industry is predominantly in the hands of the unorganised sector. The garage owners have to invest more in infrastructure so that they can attract real talent from ITIs and diploma holders. Elgi Equipments has so far trained over 8000 mechanics through its training centres, Mr Singh said. Mr S Ramprasad, General Manager (Sales), Madhus Garage Equipments Private Limited, a leading player in garage equipments industry and a Auto Serv 2006 exhibitor, said that the improvement in Indian road infrastructure and the standards of the Indian service industry were the two factors that were contributing to the growth of the Rs 200 crore Indian garage equipment industry, which is growing at 15 per cent.

Talking about the growth of the auto components industry, Mr S Balachandran, Vice President (Marketing), Sundaram Clayton Limited said the auto components industry was expected to sustain the growth of 15 per cent for the next five years. "The infrastructure in terms of roads is improving with the emergence of hub and spokes model. As a result, the contribution of multi-axle vehicles to bulk goods transportation has increased from 10 to 50 per cent in the last five years.

Similarly, the share of tractor trailers has increased to over 10 per cent in the same period, he said adding India was producing over 3,50,000 trucks a year. The market size of air brake systems for trucks was around Rs 500 crore.

UNI