Global aircraft maker Airbus has restructured its operations in India by creating a fully owned subsidiary called Airbus India to manage the company’s significant Indian footprint spread across several sites.
The new Airbus India organisation will have customer facing centres in Delhi and Mumbai. Airbus India will also include strategy, customer services and procurement teams under one organisation. A Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) capability will be established later.
The firm has also appointed Srinivasan Dwarakanath as CEO and Charles Champion as its chairman. Champion is the executive vice president of Airbus Engineering and member of the Airbus Executive Committee.
Dwarakanath was responsible for setting up Airbus’s industrial footprint in the region, including Airbus Engineering Centre India and Airbus Training India, both located in Bangalore. Today, there are some 30 Indian suppliers working on Airbus programmes and manufacturing parts for every aircraft model.
The existing Delhi Airbus liaison office will remain under the leadership of Ajay Mehra.
Dwarakanath, CEO of Airbus India, said, “Building on our significant engineering presence in India, the new company structure will add a strong customer facing element making us more agile, bringing us closer to stakeholders, suppliers and to new talent. The Airbus India organisation will foster innovation, respond quickly to growth and to seek out new cooperation opportunities in India.”
Currently Indian carriers operate a fleet of over 170 Airbus aircraft. Airbus’ current market share of sales in India represents over 60 per cent of the country’s total aircraft backlog. In addition, since 2005, Airbus has enjoyed over 60 per cent market share of all new orders.
Airbus India Engineering in Bangalore employs 350 local engineers working in engineering design and innovation activities and the number of people working directly or indirectly on Airbus programmes has reached around 5,000. The cumulative turnover of Airbus generated work in India has tripled over the last three years (over €250 million in 2013).
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
