India will emerge as major defence manufacturer in future: Baba Kalyani

Bharat Forge's Class 8 truck orders in the month of August saw steady growth, which indicates a strong year in 2018. In an exclusive interview to CNBC-TV18, Baba Kalyani, CMD of Bharat Forge spoke about the North American heavy truck market and latest happenings in the company.

He said 2016 was a low period for the North American heavy truck market.

He further said that North American truck demand expected to improve from 2017 onwards.

On business front, he said the plants are running at full capacity.

Future of automotive industry will depend on light-weight products, he added.

Talking about numbers, Kalyani said Q1 was pretty low but in Q2 we are seeing a big jump.

He expects rest of the quarters to do pretty similar. Therefore, expect a big increase coming in compared to Q1.

"The commercial vehicle (CV) sales might show small increase compared to last year but the graph is on an upward trend, the goods and services (GST) issues are behind us and we are seeing reasonably strong demand from this sector in the domestic market also," said Kalyani.

He sees India emerging as a major defence manufacturer in the future.

On the acquisition front, he is looking at all opportunities including BEML. Formerly known as Bharat Earth Movers, this state-run undertaking manufactures a variety of heavy equipment, such as that used for earth moving, transport and mining.

Watch accompanying video for more details.