With 32 years of rich and insightful experience in the automotive
industry, it's not easy to shift to completely new industry. But Sudhir Rao, who has taken charge as the India MD of Bombardier Transportation only recently, has made a smooth transition into the railways sector. In fact, besides the sector change, Rao is also working in a completely new business environment in the sense that auto industry is very B2C in nature compared to the railways sector which is B2B. But Rao is not complaining.

"The public sector has always appealed to me and when this opportunity came up, I was quite happy to take it up," he says.

Currently, Bombardier is moving around five million people daily in Mumbai and Delhi and its propulsion equipped locomotives travel around 300,000 km on Indian Railways network. "There is a growing market for public transit driven by urbanization, environmental  concerns and, most importantly, infrastructure spending by cities and governments. I want to capture more market share for Bombardier Transportation in India across business segments," Rao says.

There are various projects of Indian Railways delivering rolling stock, components, signalling and services Bombardier is keen to participate. Ministry of Railways has set out its vision for rail as a key provider of connectivity and enabler of economic development, with a proposed $125bn investment over the next five years and with its presence and experience in the Indian market, Bombardier is well poised to take a major share of the accessible market. Rao is enjoying this prospect and wants to make the most of it. "We are focused on projects which we consider as strategic and have long term prospects for our operations in India. We are closely pursuing various metro projects in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru along with light rail projects in Kerala amongst various other projects across cities in India," he shares.

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