"BOSCH IS DEEPENING INDIA PLAY AS ITS GDP & PURCHASING POWER RISE"

During a recent visit to India, STEFAN GROSCH, Member of the Board of Management and Director of Industrial Relations at Robert Bosch GmbH, outlined the group's India strategy, from ramping up investments in future mobility and artificial intelligence (AI) to tapping the country's demographic dividend and software talent, in an exclusive chat with BW Businesworld's Rohit Chintapali.

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Could you briefly outline how the board views the India market currently?

Bosch Group achieved consolidated sales of about €4.1 billion in India last year. The region accounts for roughly 4.5 per cent of our global sales. When you compare that with India’s share of global GDP, around 8.3 per cent last year, it’s clear there is more potential for us to grow. That is exactly one of our key goals: to tap into these growth opportunities. India is also one of the few regions with strong GDP growth—above 5 per cent, even 6 or 7 per cent—so we see great prospects here.

With favourable demographics and rising purchasing power, we want to benefit from this, and as a group, we are actively looking across all our businesses to find and seize opportunities in the Indian market.

When you talk about opportunities, what are Bosch’s focus areas in the current fiscal?

Maybe I start with a success story, our mobility business. India is now the third-largest market for four-wheeler production globally, so it makes perfect sense for Bosch to have a strong presence here. We have been in India for over 100 years. We have around 17 manufacturing sites and seven R&D centres across the country. It is crucial for us to be close to the market, understand our customers, and drive innovation locally. In mobility, we are clearly number one, that’s a strong track record.

The big challenge now is how we move forward with the major technology shifts: hydrogen for heavy commercial vehicles, software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and electromobility. These disruptions are happening globally and here in India too. Our strategy is to actively participate in this transformation.