Divided We Standin, United We Fall!

While talking with Edmund Chew, the Publisher of SupplierBusiness, the other day, I was surprised to know that Indian supplier companies haven't been exactly on their radar till now.

SupplierBusiness' parent company AutoBusiness (how apt can names be!) publishes a number of reports on the global supplier industry, including one report on the Asian Supplier Industry. Surprisingly, Indian suppliers do not feature at all in the Asian Supplier Report (ASR). No, not even biggies like Bharat Forge and the Sundrams of the world. It seems that none of the Indian suppliers are big enough to find a worthy mention in the ASR.

Why is that so? Isn't the Indian automotive OEM industry the 10th biggest in the world? So why aren't Indian suppliers big? The answer lies in the high fragmentation in the industry. India seems to have too many suppliers. This has happened thanks to global automakers setting up shops in India. With every carmaker that has come into the country, many supporting suppliers have followed closely. So Hyundai has been followed by some of its associates, GM benefits from Delphi and Lear (and now the Maruti-Suzuki vendor group), Ford has a Visteon in the country and Toyota has the comfort of having Denso already present in the country. Meanwhile some 'Indian' companies have set up their own groups of 'associated' suppliers. So for Maruti coming into existence, a core group of vendors were developed, including the likes of Denso, Mark Auto, Mark Exhaust and JBML. Tata Motors resorted to making Taco, a unique group of companies with tie-ups acros the globe. Mahindra has its own component division.

Japanese manufacturers prefer Japanese suppliers while the others have their own favourites too. So when it comes to seats, one has a choice of selecting between Bharat Seats, Krishna Maruti, Harita Grammer, Lear India, Tata Johnson Controls and some more. Maruti itself sources sheet metal components from at least four major vendors.

In such a scenario, only a few vendors are able to grow significantly, notable amongst them being Mico-Bosch, Bharat Forge, Asahi India (things may change in the future with Pilkington and Saint-Gobain getting serious about the Indian market) and to some extent the TVS Group (though individual entities, barring Sundram Fasteners, are small).

Will Indian suppliers grow past this glass ceiling? Will they ever be big enough to undertake independent research and development? Will we see a phase of consolidation, followed by mergers and acquisitions, in the Indian supplier industry? These are some of the questions going through my mind as I try convincing Edmund to include at least three Indian suppliers in the ASR.