Accomplishing Goals Together

The Indo-German ties have been just getting stronger with each benefitting from the other’s strength. This is reflected in a number of areas – from machinery, space research to marine science. Pointing towards this economic co-operation, Rajesh Nath, Managing Director, VDMA India, said, “Innovation should be the basis of partnership between two countries. Germany’s engineering expertise and India’s strength in IT have created natural synergies for collaboration in innovation.”

Nath lauded the inclusive nature of the government’s new reforms including GST which can potentially help in making the business environment increasingly conducive. He also spoke about the government framing a new industrial policy with an aim to create jobs for the next two decades, promote foreign technology transfer and attract $100 billion FDI annually.

Youth is the future

The Chief Guest of the summit, Shri RV Deshpande, Minister, Large and Medium Scale Industries, Karnataka, was highly appreciative of the government’s efforts of forming a cashless economy with reforms such as GST that will impose the same tax all over the nation removing multiple tax hurdles and bringing in transparency. He went on to urge the industry to come up with a solution to help the youth of the country, who constitute 60-65 percent of the population, by creating more jobs that can suit the present environment.

Digitization - the need of the hour

Addressing the audience that mostly comprised the top management from the German companies in India, Margit Hellwig-Boette, the German Consul General to India, urged the members to embrace digitization since it’s the “new way forward”. “We are living in an age of disruptive technologies and companies that don’t modernize will fall out of the race,” she added. She stressed on the need to adopt Industry 4.0 and IoT and make use of VDMA platforms and services that are made available to the members to digitize their products for the market.

An app for VDMA India was launched at the event by Shri RV Deshpande, Hellwig-Boette and Nath jointly with the aim to provide the latest industry news, update on the members and member interviews. “This is a pioneer move and shows how quickly things are developed in India and taken to a new level,” noted Hellwig-Boette commenting on the innovation capacity of the country.  

Several discussions were held in tandem with the mood of the event, Vishwanath Godavarty, Sales Account Manager (India, South Asia), Materialise Software gave a presentation on ‘Additive Manufacturing (AM) - The Game Changer for the Manufacturing Industry’, Gautam Dutta, Senior Director Marketing, Siemens Industry Software India Ltd (Digital Factory Division) spoke on ‘Digitalization - India Advantage’, and Suvir Davda, Director, Global Market Corporate Services, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd (HSBC) gave an overview on “Macroeconomic Trends and Digitization”.

Pondering over the future of manufacturing

The Knowledge Partner, Euro Asia Consulting (EAC) released a report on “Industrial Clusters in India” along with the dignitaries. Rajeev Singh, Partner Consulting, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP spoke on “Business Impact of GST on Manufacturing Industry”. A report ‘Key Sector Overview in India’, prepared by Market Research Partner BDB India Pvt Ltd, was released by Nath, Hellwig-Boette, Ulrich Ackermann, MD, VDMA, Foreign Office, Frankfurt; and KC Mani, Managing Director, BDB India Pvt Ltd.

The final leg of the summit included a panel discussion on “Coping with Growth and Overcoming Challenges in Manufacturing” moderated by Nath. The participants were Marc Jarrault, MD, Lapp India; Georg Graf, CEO, Freudenberg Regional Corporate Centre; Nitin Vyas, Managing Director, Beumer India; Sunil K Gupta, CEO & MD, KION India; Rajesh Mishra, Managing Director, Vulkan Technologies. The discussion had each participant explaining the growth in their organizations and the means used to overcome challenges.

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