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EVENT REPORT

On the move

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The India Automotive Summit organised by Noppen at Pune on October 13 -14, 2011 in Hotel Le Meridian, witnessed a gathering of around 140 prominent industry leaders and government officials from across the globe.

T

he Indian passenger market is growing at a healthy speed and is slated to become the fourth largest market in the world. Under the Automotive Mission Plan(AMP), India has set a target to become a $145 billion automotive market by 2016, for which an investment of $35-40 billion is required.In this backdrop the Summit seemed quite befitting.

Setting the agenda Among many enlightening speakers

at the event, standout ones included keynote speaker Guru Kathawate, Vice President, Automotive, Sika Corporation. He spoke on the challenges that occur in design when using advanced materials. He stated that there are several factors such as functionality, aesthetics, structural rigidity, safety, durability and economics that will affect India in 2020. His presentation addressed basic questions on managing six factors, including ‘why do I need certain parts?’ and ‘can I use a better material which can do two or three things together?’ He

summarised on the note that to achieve success in the automotive industry, India needs more ‘industry - university’ partnerships and engineers should have access to innovative technologies, better ‘application-based’ education and ‘silicon valley’ type environment where people innovate and share, which leads to speed in the developmental process, and efficient delivery times. He was shortly followed by another keynote speaker Nagaraj Meda,Chairman & Managing Director, Transgraph Consulting, who gave a different Nov/Dec 2011 | EM

| 93 | perspective of the automotive industry by addressing the commodity price risk management. He mentioned that the key challenges being faced in the automotive industry are high volatility in raw material prices which will impact profitability. Another key challenge is the increase of procurement expenditure but this is controllable. There are also a number of uncontrollable factors that will impact the sales and profitability of the automotive industry. These include technological innovations, rise in borrowing cost, competition and oil prices and last but not the least - policy intervention. In order to overcome these challenges risk management needs to be applied in both the sectors of risk management, physical hedging and financial hedging.

Show goes on On day two of the conference Professor Sudhir Gupte, Member, Managing Committee & Chair, Engineering

Education Board, SAEINDIA, & HOD, Department of Automobile Engineering, AD Patel Institute of Technology, spoke about the issue of changing customer requirements in emerging markets. He said that urbanisation, increased pay bands, and lifestyles have changed and globalisation has brought international brands to India. Customers in India are ready to pay for ‘concept’ and technology.

One to one meetings at the event

Sharing knowledge