The Hindu Business Line : CII plans meet on auto downstream businesses

CONSIDER this. The domestic automotive spare parts market is estimated at Rs 13,000 crore, the tyre replacement market at Rs 6,700 crore, and the lubricants market at Rs 6,000 crore. Car audio and car care products will account for another Rs 600 crore. With vehicle population increasing every year, the size of the aftermarket is only bound to grow. But, most of this - sales of spares or even servicing and maintenance of vehicles - is in the unorganised sector.

This is what the Confederation of Indian Industry (Southern Region) hopes to address through a B2B (business-to-business) exhibition scheduled to be held between December 4 and 6 in Chennai.

The event — AutoServ 2004 — to be held at the Chennai Trade Centre aims to bring together all players in the automobile servicing and maintenance businesses to discuss the latest developments and technologies. Its aim is to educate those in the business and demonstrate latest equipment, products, services and trends in areas such as automobile servicing, maintenance and care, components and spares, repairs and recovery, aftermarket products, vehicle technology and collision repair.

Mr R. Dinesh, co-Chairman, AutoServ 2004, and Executive Director, TVS Iyengar & Sons Ltd, pointed out that the aftermarket business offers enormous opportunities as vehicle sales have grown at 13.5 per cent a year over the last three years and 27.5 million new vehicles have come on the roads during 2000-04. This has been driving the servicing, maintenance and aftermarket business.

Vehicle servicing and maintenance were available through either branded outlets of the automobile manufacturers themselves or private companies that had entered the field, not to mention roadside mechanics. Non-vehicle manufacturers were also getting into the automotive service business. The business was affected by spurious parts, an issue that had to be tackled by all concerned. Spurious parts resulted in increased maintenance cost of Rs 4,000 crore, Mr Dinesh told a function to launch AutoServ 2004 here on Thursday.

He said the exhibition would feature thematic zones like those dealing with engine performance and maintenance, tyre care, battery maintenance and high performance fuel.

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