Bridgestone India's Strategy: Growth, Investment, and Market Leadership

Mumbai, March 24 Japanese tyre maker Bridgestone is looking to sustain its strong growth momentum in India and expects a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 67 per cent in gross sales over the next five years, its managing director Rajarshi Moitra has said.

He also said that the domestic aftermarket, especially the passenger car segment, is set for strong, robust growth and Bridgestone India remains bullish about this particular segment.

"Bridgestone India has been identified as amongst the top five growth markets of the Bridgestone Group. And in India, we are looking at continuing a strong growth momentum. Also, there is a lot of investment that the group is making. We are looking at continuing a strong growth momentum," Moitra, who was elevated to the position of Managing Director, Bridgestone India in January this year, told

The company announced its plans to invest USD 85 million in the Indian market for capacity expansion across both its manufacturing plants, Pune and Indore, in October 2024, which is currently under execution.

Moitra said the company has identified a couple of strategic areas, including product, network, capacity and capability enhancement, customer experience and building organisation.

"I would like to focus on these areas as we build the next five years of Bridgestone in India," he said.

Bridgestone Corp, the Japanese multinational group, is set to celebrate 100 years of its establishment in 2031.

Noting that the demand scenario post-GST 2.0 reforms last year has been "fairly buoyant," Moitra said even amid disruptions, there is no major shift in demand, and it continues to be "strong" for the company.

"We don't see any big shifts in the demand scenario as of now. But very early times with this conflict. So, we'll have to wait and watch in terms of how it shapes up over the next quarter," he said.

He said that for the passenger car segment, demand continues to be evenly spread because there was a lot of pent-up demand seen on both the automotive and aftermarket sides in the October-December period last year following the GST 2.0 reforms.

"Post that, we have returned to a more steady state of demand in the January-March months of this year. As of now, we don't see any major disruptive shift," Moitra said.

On the commercial vehicle side, he said, we are seeing slower movement on the port applications. "So, the port and container carriers are showing slower movements; otherwise, on infrastructure, e-commerce, and some of those movements, we don't see a significant demand shift right now.".

On the aftermarket, he said the segment grew around 2 per cent last year from a value point of view and added that aftermarket especially in the passenger car segment is set for strong, robust growth.

Initially there were the tariff uncertainties, but then post-GST reforms, there was some growth that picked up, he said adding that the long term growth in the aftermarket segment is expected to be between 5-7 as per external and internal company estimates.

Road and highway infrastructure is developing very well in India and a lot of growth is now coming from tier 2/3/4 towns.

"There is a lot of rural urbanization happening, consumers are evolving and that is going to drive to drive growth in the aftermarket segment. So we see we see strong potential and are very bullish about the aftermarket growth, both in the consumer as well as the commercial segment," Moitra said.

"I think in revenue growth terms, we would like to continue to grow our CAGR at around 67 per cent every year over the next five years, continue to hold our market leadership in the passenger car segment and market leadership, not just with volume. We are not using volume, but we're looking at how we can be a core premium value player by providing premium product service and customer experience to our consumers," he said.