Samvardanana, Chaand Sehgal, Chairman, Motherson Vroup, an auto component giant;

Mumbai: Chaand Sehgal, chairman of the Indian company, said the key to post-COVID-19 becoming a global supplier to the world is not to manufacture and export in India, but to economically produce in the customer’s country with India’s support. The future of manufacturing will no longer be a simple matter of ordering from one country to another, Sehgal said in his address at the ET Global Town Hall. The epidemic has shown that companies will have to follow the concept of global local manufacturing to become successful global suppliers.

“We’ve been following this policy for 17-18 years now,” Sehgal said. The Samvardhana Motherson Group has more than 270 manufacturing facilities in 41 countries.

The 60-year-old believes that the demand for transportation will change dramatically due to the epidemic, with more and more people preferring private transportation to public or shared transportation. Over the last two years there has been a huge amount of rethinking about how people travel and the public consensus has shifted towards shared transport, but the coronavirus epidemic has turned that on its head.

He said the devastation caused by the pandemic would lead to “massive” consolidation in the automotive industry as a result of “record” bankruptcies. Global demand for cars was falling long before the new coronavirus outbreak, and now the problem is getting worse.

Sehgal said India’s automotive ancillary products have achieved excellent targets in terms of cost and quality, making them globally competitive. He said the government can now remove some of the hurdles faced by the industry. “Generally, the ease of doing business needs to be improved. I think once you do that, you become very strong.”

However, Sehgal emphasized that the solution to becoming a successful global supplier is not to export from India, but to manufacture economically overseas with the support of Indian headquarters.