This year marks the 100th anniversary milestone for SKF in India.

Manish Bhatnagar, Managing Director, SKF India

How do you see the government’s ‘Make in India’ program and mission motivating industry to participate in it? How is this helping the construction equipment and its allied sector to improve its technological status and competitiveness in the global market?

Since its launch, the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative has been instrumental in creating a strong impact in the form of improved business environment and economic growth. To provide greater momentum to the initiative, the Indian Government has taken several steps to create an enabling environment including policy reforms, inviting FDIs and encouraging participation from domestic industry. Several sectors such as Defence, Railways, and Aerospace, have hugely benefitted from the initiative leading to increased industrial development as well as exports.

India’s construction equipment industry has been experiencing steady growth over the past few years, driven by a surge in infrastructure development projects, urbanization, and government initiatives. Specifically, the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative has led to an increased pace of digitalization, and adoption of new technologies as well as modern manufacturing processes. Furthermore, the initiative has encouraged the industry to increase R&D investments and create a robust supply chain by development of ancillary industries. Despite some challenges such as high import duties, the construction equipment industry in India is poised for growth and has the potential to become quite competitive with its global peers.

Foreseeing the government’s strong commitment and stable sentiments in the market, how do you evaluate your company’s growth in the coming years?

We are proud to share that this year marks the 100th anniversary milestone for SKF in India. Since inception, we have played a decisive role in shaping industries and societies with our products and solutions. By leveraging our domestic manufacturing footprint, product, and industry knowledge along with high-performing and diversified talent pool, we have been able to meet the evolving needs of our customers and grow our share of business. We take great pride in the long-term value we have created for our stakeholders over the past years by focusing on quality, innovation, and leadership while also investing in our communities and providing opportunities for growth.

Looking ahead, we are confident about our growth prospects. We remain committed towards accelerating our intelligent and clean growth strategy. By focusing on high-growth segments, localized solutions, and customer-centric innovation, we will continue to create significant value for our customers. In addition, our focus on new product development, digitalization of the full value chain, e-commerce, expansion of the distributor network and leveraging highly skilled talent base, coupled with government’s supportive policies positions us well to capture emerging opportunities in the country in the years to come.

What are your views on making India as a global construction equipment manufacturing hub?

In the recent past, the CE industry have taken several technology upgradations to boost productivity. By developing strong R&D base and customer-led innovation, companies have been able to improve product quality and manufacturing processes and reduce the time to market. As a result, the country has been able to grow its exports and position as a global hub for manufacturing. By further ramping up manufacturing and technological capabilities, accelerating the adoption of industry 4.0, upskilling the workforce, investing in advanced technologies, and building local supplier network, the domestic CE industry can drive future competitiveness. However, there are also challenges such as lack of infrastructure that need to be addressed to realize this potential.

Give us an understanding of your company’s performance in the last 3 years?

We have faced numerous headwinds in the past three years, including supply chains bottlenecks, and concerns related to inflation and economic uncertainty. However, we have been able to navigate these challenges successfully due to robust cash flow momentum and capital discipline, timely pricing actions, and operational efficiencies. The government initiatives and favourable policies have played an equally important role.

Over the last three years, our revenue and Profit Before Tax (PBT) have consistently improved. In Q3FY23, our revenue increased 11% and PBT increased by 46% year-over-year. We continue to execute our strategic priorities and combined with our portfolio management capabilities, we are confident of our financial position and our ability to meet the evolving needs of the Indian market.

What are your strategies at a time when technological disruptions are rapidly defining businesses in the sector?

We are focused on the careful execution of our strategic framework of intelligent and clean growth. Sustainable growth has become mainstream and as more businesses commit to net-zero, they will need solutions that can decarbonize their business. We are leveraging our existing engineering and technology capabilities, and vast product portfolio to deliver clean solutions to our customers. We are helping them reduce friction, machine downtime, maintenance costs, and carbon emissions. While our bearings help customers achieve sustainable and reliable rotations, our solutions like Rotating Equipment Performance and maintenance products help them augment their equipment maintenance strategy. Our condition monitoring solutions use the latest connected technologies to collect data from a wide variety of plant assets, transform that data into actionable insights, and help customers make informed decisions regarding their equipment and business.

We are leveraging technology to improve our own manufacturing processes and transition to factories of the future that are lean, green, and digital. By digitalizing our full value chain and using technologies like AI/ML, vision inspection, and traceability, we are improving the quality of our products and solutions and increasing the efficiency of our supply chain. These technologies are also helping us detect failure early and improve processes. We are eliminating waste in our entire supply chain by implementing the SKF production system, which not only creates a safe workplace, but also helps improve quality, material flow, and productivity. By adopting renewable energy to power our factories and reducing dependence on natural resources, we are ensuring that our factories have limited environmental impact.

We will continue to invest in emerging technologies and innovate to improve our processes and create solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. We are confident that with the careful execution of our strategy, we will create a different SKF, which is a technical partner of choice among customers, and a leader in development of sustainable solutions.

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