India’s contribution in the global electric vehicles and aerospace market in the last few years has been on the rise, with a marked increase in volume and quality of high precision gears being exported from the country, American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) president President Matthew Croson told ET. Increased investment towards the manufacturing sector, both from government and private players, he added, was a major contributor towards this.
“At the end of the day, you can’t make the gears at the level without new equipment, and well trained people that can work those machines. Our member companies from India are doing a great job of demonstrating quality that’s coming out of India right now,” he said. AGMA, which has been accredited to write the US standards on gearing, counts 17 Indian companies among its members.
A major emerging trend in the gear industry worldwide, Croson said, was vehicle electrification. “We’ve learned that because of the NVH, the noise and the volume, the vibration, and some of the issues there, electric vehicles need high precision gears. It requires new education and training, and we’re providing classes from our organisation for this…it is a net positive for the industry,” he said.
Speaking about the boost to EV production in India from the government, Croson said that while EV growth in the country was poised to go “upwards and to the right,” there may have to be an adjustment of some of the government-set timelines. “Scaling up, especially in the EV sector, takes a lot of infrastructure support…it is going to come, but maybe the timelines will be extended,” he said.
The Indian government’s push towards electrification of public transport, he said, was yet another exciting space for the gear industry, along with electrification of large scale farming equipment and hybrid vehicles. “You have to pay attention to, you know, hybrids as a long term. Honda has come out, you know, Toyota has come out in favour of hybrids. These are not inconsequential statements from their leadership,” he said.
Bengaluru-based Bevel Gears managing director Sulaiman Jamal echoed Croson’s sentiment on government input, saying policies like ‘Make in India’ had played a huge role in enabling the sector to compete globally. “Earlier there were some reservations in our buyers’ minds about buying high precision parts from overseas [India]. But we proved ourselves, and a lot of the credit goes to the state and central government’s policies encouraging defence and aerospace manufacturing,” he added.
The globally competitiveness of the Indian-made gears hits a snag when it comes to custom duties on importing high precision machines, Jamal said. “While government policies have come a long way, there still needs to be more liberalisation in terms of making equipment imports easier,” he added.
Bevel Gears, which is a member of AGMA, will be inaugurating its newest manufacturing facility at the defence and aerospace park near Bengaluru’s international airport in September this year. The company, whose gears were used in ISRO’s moon rover Pragyan in the Chandrayaan-3 mission last year, has been supplying critical hi-tech gears to Indian Defence entities for applications in jet planes, helicopters and other sensitive developmental projects, as well as exporting precision gears.
