CHENNAI: French auto major PSA has announced its intention to re-enter the Indian market with its "trendy, comfortable" brand Citroen. In an interview with TOI, Emmanuel Delay, executive vice-president & head of India-Pacific, Groupe PSA, talks about the group's investments in the Indian market.

What are the details of the powertrain joint-venture between PSA and CK Birla Group? And what about the joint venture to assemble cars for Indian market?

The long-term partnership between PSA Groupe and CK Birla Group includes two joint venture agreements. Under the first agreement, the PSA Group will hold a majority stake in the joint venture for the assembly and distribution of PSA passenger cars in India. Under the second agreement, a 50/50 joint venture is formed between the PSA Group and AVTEC Ltd to manufacture and supply powertrains.

Production site for powertrain JV will be Hosur and the vehicle plant will be at Tiruvallur near Chennai both in Tamil Nadu . As already shared earlier the capacity of the Powertrain plant will be 300,000 gearboxes and 200,000 engines per annum.

Can you share some more details of the assembly line where the vehicles will be manufactured? What kind of investment are you putting into India?

We aim to be one of the most efficient car companies in the world and we do not think the size of investment is a measure of success or impact. In early 2017, at the time of the announcement of the JV agreements between PSA and CK Birla Group, we estimated the investment conservatively at Rs 700 crore or about 100 million euros. Since then, we have revised our estimate at about Rs 1,250 crore in eligible fixed assets.

In addition, PSA has R&D activities located in Tamil Nadu which will represent some significant investment. We stand by what we said earlier that in the first phase, we intend to establish a vehicle assembly capacity at about 1,00,000 vehicles per year at the plant in Tiruvallur and will benefit from additional investment as the project ramps up over the long term.

The performance of the industrial structure will be supported by a high degree of local integration, in order to achieve the required level of cost competitiveness.

