Supply Chain Crisis Management

From being considered a healthy alternative to China in the aftermath of the Covid-19 epidemic, the Indian automotive industry was faced with an uphill task of crisis management.

- Ashish Bhatia

Towards the fag end of January, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 outbreak in China, highly import-dependent countries began scouting for alternative manufacturing and assembly units to de-risk their supply chain ties. To overcome the deadlock in their supply chain, they leaned to countries with relatively normalised supply chains and production capacities. India was counted among countries like Taiwan and the United States of America (USA) as being more suited to serve the needs of the global automotive clientele. As the chants of “China’s loss could be India’s gain,” were seen gathering momentum, the stakeholders of India’s automotive industry sprung to look at ways to engage the small, medium and large enterprise community in an adverse time for its neighbouring country. The opportunity to serve a global automotive clientele presented itself as a means to revive business and hedge severe losses accumulated along a period of a prolonged economic slump worsened by the softened market sentiment in the domestic market. Just as global companies appeared to have found the perfect solution to reduce supply chain bottlenecks, covid-19 was pronounced as a pandemic. Instead of embarking on the journey of global outreach, India faced an uphill task of supply chain crisis management.

The severity