Niti Aayog CEO added that there is need for new synergies such as with IT industry in the areas of power electronics. India must look at using the first mover advantage for producing all components for electric vehicles, thus driving towards the path of being a future global leader.

In this interview with Rakesh Rao, Anurag Garg, MD & Country Head (India), Vitesco Technologies - formerly the Powertrain Division of Continental - discusses how auto component industry is coping with COVID pandemic and the growth plans of the company.

The last three months were difficult for the auto component industry while there is hope for a partial recovery with two- and three-wheeler market and exports. For long, the Indian automotive market experienced slowdown headwinds which were followed by Covid 19. In this article, This article discusses auto component industry challenges and the way ahead.

The Covid 19 pandemic is having enormous effects globally. The global economy has been hit hard, even worse than the Great Depression in 1930.

The new package is expected to give a big boost to the MSME sector, which has been under severe stress.

In FY20, the industry sales experienced a sharp decline of 14.8 per cent y-o-y vis-à-vis a growth of about 6.4 per cent during FY19 led by factors such as increased insurance costs, uneven monsoon, high ownership costs, curtailed lending by the NBFC segment,etc.

To fight novel coronavirus disease (Covid 2019), the government ordered a 21-day nation-wide lockdown, starting March 25.

The Association of Indian Forging Industry (AIFI), the apex body of the Indian Forging Industry, has observed that the disruption caused by the Coronavirus (Covid-19) has hit the automotive industry and thus also affected the automotive component and forging industries.

Indian Forging Industry depends on 60 per cent of its revenues from the domestic automotive industry. Automotive industry was hopeful for recovery with post introduction of BS VI from the slowdown but Coronavirus (Covid-19) has impacted on the recovery of the domestic market.