Valeo Targets €700 Million India Revenue with Electrification and ADAS Push

As Valeo commits €200 million to expand its India footprint, Global CEO Christophe Périllat outlines the company’s growth roadmap, its push into electrification and advanced driver assistance systems, and why artificial intelligence will accelerate the next phase of autonomous mobility. He also explains the rationale behind Valeo’s local-for-local strategy and its long-term conviction in India’s rising technology content per vehicle.

With €200 million committed to India, what scale of revenue growth or market positioning are you aiming to achieve?

We're about to grow and we are about to triple our sales in India. Valeo has been present in India for about 30 years. This fresh investment of €200 million will help us take our revenue to €700 million in the next three years. It means we have the orders, we have the trust of our customers, and we are now preparing our plans to make sure that these sales will happen by 2028. This is mainly on the EV side and hybrids. The investment is also on the ADAS side, mainly advanced driving systems. These are the two fields where we are growing the most and this is where we are investing the most.

Valeo's India revenues are only 1% of its global revenues. Do you see that number changing significantly after your investment?

India today represents about 6 to 7 percent of the worldwide automotive industry, and only around 1 percent of Valeo’s revenues. So yes, that is a problem, right? And we want to address that.

The reason for this 1 percent is that, historically, the technology content of the average Indian car was not as high. But now we see more and more technology being adopted. The AI Summit itself is evidence that India is about technology. India is about digital technology. India is about having the right amount of technology everywhere, including in cars.

We see a tremendous push today for technology, driven by consumers. Valeo is a high-tech company providing automotive technologies to its customers. When the profile of the market and the profile of Valeo match, that creates the promise of growth.

As you scale towards €700 million in sales, will growth be driven more by battery electric vehicles or hybrids, or do you see both contributing equally?

For us, at the end of the day, it is the same technology. When I say electrification, I am referring to products like electric motors, power electronics, chargers, inverters, DC converters, battery cooling systems and similar components.

All these technologies are present in a BEV, a battery electric vehicle, but they are present in very much the same way in a plug-in hybrid. So whether it is EV or PHEV, for Valeo, in terms of the components and technologies we have developed, it is essentially the same.

Whether the market moves more towards EVs or more towards hybrids, what really matters is that the car is becoming electrified. And every additional electrified vehicle, regardless of the mix, represents an opportunity for us.

There has been an FTA between India and Europe. What are your views on the same?

Our view is simple. The way we want to be organised is to be local. Not just to optimise tariffs or trade costs. That is not why we are investing in India. We are doing this because we want to satisfy our customers. And our customers are the Indian OEMs. They are asking us to be local, so that we can develop technologies and products at their doors, close to them.

We have decided for a long time to be local in India. Day after day, we want to become even more an Indian company in India, with Indian management, an Indian workforce, Indian plants, Indian suppliers and Indian research and development. We want to be fully Indian, whatever trade agreements may happen in the world.

Going forward, do you see Valeo positioning itself more as a component supplier or as a full system integrator?

Our job is to adapt to what our customers want. Our customers are the OEMs, the vehicle manufacturers. In some cases, they want us to act as a system supplier. In other cases, they prefer to divide a system into components and source those components from different companies. They may also choose to rely on one global system partner.

We have a good example with Mahindra and their Born EV cars, where we are supplying almost the full electric powertrain. So we are able to adapt to whatever the customer is asking us to do. In every situation, our priority is to satisfy our customers.

When we look at automotive history and the relationship between OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, suppliers have taken a higher and higher share of the car. For whatever we do, we have a market share of around 20 to 25 percent worldwide in several areas. You do not have OEMs with that level of global market share. The largest OEM globally has around 11 percent.

Because suppliers like us have a higher global reach, we develop the technology once and spread the cost over a much larger base. That makes it easier for us to bring new technology to market. That is why we believe that the content per car coming from suppliers will continue to increase going forward.

Which powertrain will you be placing the highest bet on? Is it LNG, CNG, petrol, diesel, EV or hybrids?

The question is quite simple. The planet is warming up, I think we can agree on that. And the automotive sector is responsible for around 18 percent of global CO₂ emissions. You cannot decarbonise the world without decarbonising mobility.

So we need to decarbonise mobility as quickly as possible. Electrification is only one set of technologies that enables that decarbonisation. Yes, we are placing our bet on electrification. But electrification does not necessarily mean only battery electric vehicles. It can mean hybrids, plug-in hybrids and range extenders. Electrification can take different technological forms.

What we are absolutely convinced about is that the car industry, and the car as an object, will become electrified one way or another. And it will have to become electrified as quickly as possible.

Under the Elevate 2028 India plan, do you also see significant export potential being built out of India?

We are not excluding exports, but that is not the primary plan. Our strategy is local for local. We are North American in North America, we are Chinese in China, we are European in Europe and we want to be Indian in India.

We want to be a technology company that is competitive and closely aligned with the needs of our customers. Our customers are asking us to be next door, to adapt to their mix of cars and their mix of powertrains.

You cannot do this effectively from a remote location. To be successful in the automotive industry, you need to be very local.

What role do you see China playing in the global automotive industry from here onwards?

China is today the main automotive market in the world and also the largest producer of cars. So it plays a very important role in the global automotive industry. It is also a very important part of Valeo’s business. We have 27 plants and around 18,000 people in China.

In China, we want to be Chinese, in the same way that in India we want to be Indian. In any region of the world, success in automotive comes down to technology and competitiveness. That applies in China and it applies in India as well.

Would it be fair to say that Valeo’s biggest bets for the future are electrification and AI?

Yes, it is electrification and it is software, AI, safe mobility and autonomous driving. All of this is connected. It is about bringing the right level of software, sensing and computing into vehicles to make them safer and more efficient. And this applies not only to cars, but also to two-wheelers and three-wheelers, where we also see opportunities to improve safety and technology content.

What role do you see AI playing in the cars of tomorrow?

AI is extremely important across many fields. It improves the competitiveness of companies, it improves research and development, and it also enables the creation of new products.

If I extrapolate a bit, the autonomous car has been announced for many years, yet somehow it is still not fully there. I was in traffic in Delhi and I did not see any autonomous cars being driven. So it is a technology that has been talked about for a long time, but has not happened at scale.

I strongly believe that AI is now the true enabler for autonomous cars. Over the next ten years, we will see a tremendous acceleration in autonomous driving technology thanks to AI. AI was the missing element needed to really bring this technology to scale.