BL interview. Bosch India will grow by 15-20% this year: President Bhattacharya

The peak of 2018-19 (passenger car sales) was crossed in FY23 for certain segments. So if I break up the segments, 4 million was crossed in FY19, and 4.4 million in FY23 is likely to happen. And if we have a GDP of 6% plus, there’s the likelihood of a 4.7 or 4.8 million sales. So that augurs well. We have higher content, higher values, and average realisation prices.

And if you see LCV’s (Light Commercial Vehicles), the peak of 2018-19 is also getting crossed rarely. What is not getting crossed is HCV of 480,000. And if you take the current number of 370,000, you are comparing apples with oranges. The 480,000 will take some time to reach. If you look at three-wheelers at 1.25 million, we are (currently) touching around anywhere between 800 to 900K.

Two-wheelers, the base price at that time in 2018-19 was anywhere between 65,000 to 80,000. Today, it is anywhere between 1,10,000 to 1,45,000. So we have different technologies, higher content, and of course, prices have gone up from the base price. So in summary, I would say that India, relatively, in the automotive market is doing well, and we will continue to see this.

Very briefly, a year ago we were hitting around ₹2,800 crores per quarter. Amounting to, let’s say ₹11,000 to ₹12,000 crores (annual revenues) anyway in that region. Last year, in CY22, or if I look at FY23, we will have a growth of 15%, but I can safely say a 20% growth for Bosch will happen. Now consistently in the last few quarters, we see that in the future also we should do ₹3,500 to 3,600 crores (revenues per quarter). So the growth has come in. Bosch India is having content per vehicles not just equal to the market, but better than the market.

The supply situation of semiconductors worldwide and for India also has eased, I have not said it is over. So, I would differentiate very clearly between eased and gone away. It is not gone away. Second, the whole supply chain. We believe that FY24 should be an eased out situation and a normalised situation in semiconductors, with one word of caution, we are not back to a normal world, pre covid, in the year 18-19 where people never even discussed stock. We are far away from that.

In India, the EV market is (still) very niche. It is not comparable to either Europe or even China. We must remember, that while leapfrogging is happening, but on a very low base. So, below 1% situation, today, if you talk of a 4.1 million or 4.4 million passenger car sales, and on that, if you look at 150,000 EV vehicles being sold in India, or 120,000, that’s a small value as well as percentage. We are assuming, that, the battery prices will fall, that infrastructure will improve, that with PLI and FAME benefit hunger for EV will increase.

So we said, based on that (only) 25% to an optimistic 30% in 2030 (will be EV), which is say seven to eight years from today, by the end of 2030, there is a possibility that India would have, 70% up to 75%, will (continue to) be ICE.

India will be an ICE market for a long time. Growth of EV will happen substantially on a low base, with a possibility if all those boundary conditions remain of going up to 25% realistically.

In the automotive aftermarket where we are a leader in India, I think we have done very well. Today, the automotive aftermarket is improving its footprints and has nearly 500 locations for the Bosch wash car service and aim is to go towards 1000 Bosch car services.

The power tools business is the market leader with 26% market share. Here, we will further localise and we are looking at various areas of how we can expand our products even more for deeper penetration in the Indian market. So in summary (of our other businesses, we provide), high levels of service, affordability, innovation, deeper localisation and, broadening of the portfolio.

Lastly, building technologies. This is a smaller part of Bosch Limited, but we don’t want to let that go and we are wanting to really accelerate that business and we are very deeply looking along with our parent on what are the possibilities.