Sources have stated that Apollo Tyres, which recently commissioned its first overseas green field manufacturing facility in Hungary, wants to de-risk its operations through geographic diversification. The Managing Director Neeraj Kanwar told Sharmistha Mukherjee that while the government’s Make-in-India programme is a progressive initiative, the dumping of cheap tyres by Chinese manufacturers has surfaced as a massive challenge for Indian companies, prompting their search for diverse opportunities.
Today, 60% of the company's revenues come from the Indian market. It used to be 85-90%. With this plant coming up, it will come down a bit to 55%. And a level we will stay at is 50:50. Very clearly, our vision for 2020 in India is to become leaders in all product categories trucks, light trucks, farm or passenger cars. In Europe, our aim is to become a premium brand. He said the problem with India is, on one hand, Mr. Modi is saying Make-in-India, but you see we ourselves have come to Hungary.
We would love to do it in India but there are far fewer opportunities because of today in truck radials, 30-35% is Chinese dumping in India. 35% market share for the Chinese is huge, in our country. And there are no barriers, tariff or non-tariff. People just come in and dump. So, it becomes very tough to operate.
And we have been taking it up with the government time and again about (imposing) the anti-dumping duty. To answer your question, that’s the main reason. My hands are full, there is much more risk in China. My risk appetite is low and whereas in America, there is relatively lesser risk.
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