Post-restructuring of its Indian arm, Wabco Holdings, a leading global supplier of safety and control systems for commercial vehicles, aims stronger growth for Wabco India (formerly Wabco TVS (India)) in view of the favourable growth prospects in the Indian commercial vehicle industry.

“Indian operations are definitely of strategic importance to us. As India will emerge as the future source of commercial vehicles, we are keen to participate in this growth story by leveraging engineering and technical capabilities of our Indian subsidiary,” Jacques Esculier, chairman and CEO, Wabco, said.

India is seen as a one of the high growth markets for Wabco due to its expected volume of truck production and increasing adoption of advanced technology from commercial vehicle segment. About 70 per cent of the world’s truck and buses are produced out of China, India and Brazil.

Though BSE-listed Wabco India is the preferred supplier of braking systems and components to all commercial vehicle OEMs, including the latest entrants, in the country it expects higher growth in India due to increasing need for better technology and safety products like anti-lock braking systems (ABS). “Commercial vehicles produced in emerging markets currently adopt only one tenth to one fifth of the technology that we typically apply on heavy duty vehicles in Europe,” according to Esculier.

“Presently 9 out of 10 trucks in the country have Wabco components. We have also set up a test track over 200 acre near Chennai for conducting braking tests on different surfaces,” said P Kaniappan, whole time director, Wabco India said.

With three factories, an international purchase office, a test track, product development centre and a software development centre, Indian operations are key to Wabco’s growth plans now. Product and software development centers of the company in the country employ close to 250 engineers.

Wabco will consolidate its brand under the Wabco name in for Indian operations. After the acquisition of majority stake from TVS, Wabco has been allowed to use TVS logo or trademark upto 2 June 2012. Since Wabco India has also been supplying to Wabco’s global requirements, the company is charting Rs 60 crore capacity expansion drive. It would spend major chunk of the capex in its Chennai unit that caters to the needs of Wabco plants globally. The company is also establishing a new plant near Lucknow in UP.