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How do you assess the current economic scenario and the growth prospects?
We have enough capacity available. So, if the market grows two times of what it is today, we can easily meet the demand with our existing facility. However, with respect to growth potential, undoubtedly, India offers a huge growth potential. Currently we are far below the developed countries in per-capita consumption of concrete, steel and cement. However, we are worried a little bit about the three year downturn that has happened in India; since we do not know when the market will bounce back to reach the growth level we had during the boom time. I feel that it would easily take one or two years.

Which are the sectors that will drive the demand?
Investment in NHAI projects, smart city development, north-east road development project and the 16 new port projects and port connectivity are some of the initiatives which will definitely create market for the construction equipment industry. In the last five years, metro and mono rail projects, and high rise constructions have increased in urban areas of NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Jaipur etc and most of our equipment are being used in such projects. Apart from the metro rail project, our equipment are being used to build wider roads, bridges and flyovers, thus aiming for de-congestion of roads to beat the traffic.

What are the major challenges in the current scenario and what are your suggestions to iron out these?
Basically, there is no business, which is the biggest challenge. The business has to improve. All the manufacturers have huge installed capacity, but the demand is much lower than the installed capacity. Once this is sorted out, automatically other issues will fall in place.

What are the initiatives taken by Schwing Stetter to sustain the growth?
Going green and environmental responsibility are universally accepted concepts. Fuel efficiency comes predominantly from our truck mixers, pumps and batching plants. We have full support from our parent company to make sure that we also introduce environment-friendly products without compromising on quality, productivity and minimum downtime.

What is your take on bC India? Is there any new product launches?
bC India is the first major exhibition after the change of government in India and naturally expectations are very high. Schwing Stetter India will make use of this opportunity by introducing many new products. We will be announcing all the new products to be launched during the exhibition.

How do you assess the future potential by 2020?
There are many reports which are projecting high growth for construction machinery in the near future till the horizon of 2020. We are used to such high CAGR for the industry till 2011, as the market slowed down and remained slow/flat till 2013. Many projects awarded during the slowdown phase are getting life now and we expect spent up requirements will be coming up in 2015 followed by announcements of new projects. This will be fuelling further growth in the industry. While the percentage of growth depends on various factors, we agree strongly that growth for the industry is inevitable.