For the auto industry, 2020 has been a year to forget. Between the April-June period — the peak of the lockdown — passenger vehicle sales crashed over 78 percent after having declined for nine straight quarters.
A recent parliamentary panel report submitted to the chairman of the Rajya Sabha pegged losses for the auto industry during the lockdown at Rs 2,300 crore per day, making it the longest slowdown in two decades. The same report also noted that 3.4 lakh jobs were lost in the sector during the lockdown.
However, the festive season brought some relief with most automakers seeing a sharp surge in sales and players like Tata Motors hitting record highs.
Companies like Tata Motors, Honda, BMW, Ashok Leyland and Toyota have also offered voluntary retirement schemes to some employees to reduce costs.
But how will 2021 shape out to be and how are leading industry players formulating targets for the New Year? To discuss this, Parikshit Luthra spoke to Rakesh Sharma, Executive Director of Bajaj Auto; Vinod Aggarwal, MD and CEO of VECV and Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director – Marketing and Sales at Maruti Suzuki India.
To know more, watch the video.