in an interview to etcfo the jk tyres cfo sanjeev aggarwal sheds light on the implications of the ongoing slowdown in the auto industry and shares his demand outlook on the same the major problem facing the economy today is the lack of availability of finance and raising funds has become difficult from banks he added but he assured the company as per such is not facing any major financing challenges jk tyre industries ltd is a delhibased tyre manufacturer which has global presence in 100 countries across six continents backed by production support from 12 plants 9 in india and 3 in mexico currently the capacity across all its plants is about 35 million tyres per annum advt below are the edited excerpts of the interview q what do you make of the continuing slowdown in the automobile industry what does it imply for the tyres sector sanjeev aggarwal we have been seeing a slowdown in the automobile industry for the last eight months or so ever since the ilfs crisis erupted a variety of factors have contributed to this the major of all is the lack of availability of finance in the nonbank financial companies nbfc space if you look at the auto industry more than 80 per cent of the purchase is through bank nbfc finance the liquidity issue has adversely impacted the sentiments in the industry other factors playing into this slowdown were the changes in axle load norms which led to increase in capacity with the fleet owners and hence affected demand especially in the commercial vehicle segment lower spend by the government due to general elections and rise in insurance costs of vehicles also contributed to its slow down as far as the tyres sector is concerned this space has overall market size of approx 60000 crore it operates in two segments the replacement market and original equipment manufacturer oem category the slowdown in the automobile space has had an impact on the latter and not the former advt having said that overall the tyres industry is a crucial part of automobiles as a whole the auto sector contributes about 75 per cent of the gdp and employs about 37 million people directly or indirectly it is important for the sector to come back in shape at the earliest and play an integral role in the indias vision of becoming the 5 trillion economy by 202425 q what is your demand outlook in the midlong term and whysanjeev aggarwal things are only going to improve from here on for the auto industry i expect this space to start reviving as early as the latter part of the second quarter of this financial year 201920 clear direction from the government on enhanced infrastructure spending in the budget 201920 will address the challenges both on the demand and the financing side going forward further the regulator reserve bank of india as well as the government have been taking adequate steps especially to improve the