Volkswagen India is doing fairly well year on year when it comes to exports. And Dr. Lauermann is quite happy about it. "We are very successful with our exports because we have created it as our second leg. The Indian market is a little bit volatile so the Company has kind of de-risked its business by also focussing on the exports market. "In total, we are fairly successful when it comes to exports. Mexico is our biggest exports market. We also export to Argentina, which also gives us good volumes. These are the markets where you also have to focus on quality. You can be successful in those markets only if you are able to deliver quality. And I am happy that our plant is able to do this. At the moment our exports to domestic sales ratio is 55:45. Of course, we want it to be more balanced and with the Ameo we think we will be able to achieve that. While we are happy with the way our exports business is growing, we would surely want to increase our domestic sales and that is our main target."

The VW Group has recently announced the setting up of its IT delivery and support centre in Pune, Volkswagen IT Services India with an investment of Euro 3 million. Dr. Lauermann calls it an important step and Volkswagen's contribution to ‘Make in India'. "Having an independent IT center allows us at the plant to focus on making and selling cars. Of course, the IT center also supports us with its activities but it is global in nature as it is also catering to other Volkswagen markets globally. Having this centre in Pune makes sense because Pune is also an IT hub and there is immense talent available in the region," he shares.

Then we turn to the controversy that rocked Volkswagen globally, the emission issue. Obviously, like everywhere else, it also impacted the India operations. Dr. Lauermann told us how much. "As I mentioned earlier, we started pretty well in 2015 and we were doing quite good till this issue struck us in September. As a result sales started dropping as much as 30 percent. Thankfully, we were able to recover from it to some extent with the final number at three percent in terms of the loss. This year, of course, we are and will be doing much better. We are winning back the trust of the customers also," he says with certain confidence.

(Continued on next page)