Let Us Step into the Future with Confidence!

All India Cycle Manufacturers Association

"There never were many compulsions before the major players to seriously look beyond the national frontiers, the vast domestic demand keeping them fully occupied, even satisfied."

The world around us is changing fast. Each day rises on a defiant note: defiant of the irrelevant, the past and the obsolete. The Indian bicycle industry needs to wake up to the hard knocking reality and shake out of its smugness. For long years, we remained insulated from the fierce environs of the marketplace. In fact, there never were many compulsions before the major players to seriously look beyond the national frontiers, the vast domestic demand keeping them fully occupied, even satisfied. Within the last couple of years, indeed a very small prospect of competition from our neighbourhood, seemed to hold out a veritable threat. The whole market, the Industry leaders as well as the media worked overtime to assess and develop strategies to ward off the menace. But then, no body seemed to have a clue. As trade barriers come down, nations vie with one another to claim an increasing share in the opportunity pie. The exposure for us may be a little all too sudden in some respects.

Avon Cycles Ltd

To integrate–and that certainly is the need of the times–we need to make an objective assessment of our capabilities, know our customer in the global village, strive to refit ourselves to the new environment and work our plus points up to the hilt. If we can upgrade our product, modernise our production techniques, learn our lessons in market penetration, we already have a perfect recipe for performance. The hangovers and liabilities of the past may well be turned into assets and opportunities of the present.

The Industry holds out the promise of a big earner of foreign exchange for the nation. The Government of the day can play its role and accord it the necessary encouragement. The process of creating an enabling environment definitely suffered a jolt recently when the Finance Minister failed to see merit in continuing the exemption from the excise net. The gain to the exchequer may not after all be worth the chase, but the industry’s competitiveness clearly came under a disabling blow. Or, how else may we rationalise the wisdom of his predecessors in unbroken succession?