Harkirat Singh Ryait (Executive Director) 

G S Auto International

Looking Back at Financial Year 2021

The year 2020-21 has not been a good year for the auto industry and also for the GS plant. Our operations were completely shut down during April-June that too after a bad year 2019-20 which experienced a slowed down economy affecting the auto industry. Efforts were made to restart the plant in June-July as a survival method with phase withdrawal of lockdown while maintaining all the mandatory requirements to protect health issues. For the CV segment it was the worst period for everyone including management, employees, customers, etc.

Takeaways and Positives from Challenging Year

Takeaways from this experience were many: a) effectiveness of lean management, b) optimum usage of the resources deployment to protect life and its sustainability, c) need of tighter cash flows, and d) importance of customer relationship. The aftermarket segment emerged as an opportunity and also the ultimate saviour of the auto component industry.

Thoughts on PLI Scheme

PLI is a good initiative by the government but seems to favour bigger corporate and industrial houses as visible from the comments appearing in the media. That is because bigger industrial groups have diversified business interests and perhaps deep pockets. For MSMEs the implementation needs to be kept very simple and direct benefits should have been considered such as, a) interest waivers for accrued interest; b) reduction in corporate tax burden; c) support in lower cost of power, consumable; d) direct benefits to meet cost of employees to sustain. Basically PLI can consider such benefits even now.

Plans for Financial Year 2022

The assumption for 2021-22 is that the market should rebound and the worst is over. The industry as well GS Auto would like to plan aggressive business growth of 30+% over the past years as the last two years 2019-2021 have been very bad and financially tough years. At GS Auto we will focus on new product introduction, expansion of plant facilities, achieve economy of scales, network expansion and improve the productivity of men and machines while maintaining tighter control on the cash flow to protect and grow the business volumes.