Manfred Baden - Executive Vice-President (Sales), Bosch Electrical Drives & Chairman, Bosch Electrical Drives India

How is the global electrical drives market faring?
There is huge growth in North America where the market for electrical drives grew by 26 percent last year. It is recovering from the crisis in 2009. We expect it to grow this way for the next two years. China is also good and the segment there grew by 24 percent last year. Europe is a different case — it’s a flat market. This is very challenging and we don’t expect things to change for the next two years. India, on the other hand, is down by 12 percent compared to previous years. For electrical drives, India is an important market and we expect the growth to come back soon, along with other emerging markets like Russia and the ASEAN region. One-third of our sales comes from the Asia-Pacific region.
Given the cost pressures you face, what sort of localisation happens in India for your division?
Localisation is at the request of the customers. It’s product by product. For wiper blades, they expect wiping quality that is found in the global markets. You need a special kind of rubber for this and you can’t set that up first day with such low volumes in India. We import it from Europe or China. We are in every region, our HQ is in Germany and have plants in Mexico, Brazil, China, Korea, Thailand and South afirca. We are really a global supplier.The Chennai plant is definitely not our smallest plant. Our plants in Thailand and South Africa are smaller. The bigger plants are in Germany, Mexico and China.
Are there any plans to produce Bosch's other products in India?
If there’s a demand, we are ready to deliver that. Power steering motors are coming up in India and we make these motors globally. Once we have a demand from customers, we can start at another facility and then localise it depending on the volume.