steffen berns was in india for three years between 1996 and 1999 when he was responsible for boschs sales of automotive original equipment and rd thirteen years later he is back here as managing director of the now rs 8000crore bosch bosch which came to india in 1951 and which is headquartered in bangalore is a subsidiary of robert bosch the 51billion euro german engineering and electronics company and the worlds largest supplier of automotive components in an interview with toi berns and outgoing md v k viswanathan speak about the road aheadyou were in india for three years in the 1990s what are the big changes you see since thenberns we were called mico then now its bosch the industry has become much bigger considerable volumes here by the end of this decade it will be the third largest automotive producer in the world with this the competence and confidence levels have increased large international players have come in theres an understanding of being a big player theres confidence that local solutions are important and can be developedwhich are these areas where local solutions are most importantberns the major driver of the market is cost total cost of ownership is very important then theres the stopgo traffic here more stop than go actually the fuel quality is different so certain adjustments are requiredviswanathan its a value for money country the initial cost and the running cost including fuel efficiency and repair and maintenance costs together is what is important for customers so these are the big focus areas for us as also some of our nonautomotive businesseswhich onesviswanathan we have nearly onethird of the power tools market in india both electrical and electronic power tools these are things like angle grinders for cutting grinding and polishing and demolishers with the growing shortage of labour and high growth in the construction sector we expect this segment to grow significantly we have a strong auto aftermarket business supplying spare parts and providing services there are 600 bosch car service centres in india with electronics becoming integral to vehicles sophisticated diagnostic systems are required by service centres to find faults and we supply those we have a major packaging business now with our plant in goa that became operational five months ago we supply packaging machines that weigh fill and pack contents for the food pharma and confectionery segments with fdi in retail we expect this will become a big business we have also got into solar thermal systems for water heating into industrial boilers solar panels many of these areas have grown a lot in the past ten yearswhats your mandate for the next few yearsberns my mandate is to build on the successful past ensure profitable growth well of course focus on automotive but also look a lot more on the other areas mr viswanathan mentioned the growth potential in the relatively smaller areas is very high especially solar packagingis the diesel pricing issue causing uncertainty for youviswanathan these kind