The Rolling Resistance

The tyre industry has done well to keep the wheels of the nation rolling in a pandemic marred financial year. Ashish Bhatia gets the stakeholders to reflect on the changes, for good and bad, in an ongoing series of engaging conversations.

- Ashish Bhatia

The Financial Year 2021 (FY2021) began by casting a shadow over the tyre industry’s growth prospects. Believed to be leading the march for India, manufacturing for the rest of the globe, tyre manufacturing was battered by the repeated blows of lockdown in Q1FY2021. The industry was left with no choice but to take the blows in the interest of preventing the transmission of Covid-19, and to support the government in its efforts for the larger good. As a result, in an unprecedented move, the tyre industry, known to be a continuous process industry, shut down tyre manufacturing plants across the nation.

According to KM Mammen, Chairman Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association (ATMA), the industry complied with the need of the hour despite knowing that a sudden shut down of operations could deal a body blow to the work-in-progress and the raw material inventory. “Thankfully, when the lockdown was lifted,” averred Mammen, “the industry got down to business in the right earnest, braving all odds and disruptions. It goes to the credit of the industry that not only domestic demand was met squarely but sustained focus was also maintained on tyre exports.”