The Long-Trend In India Is Very Strong

MARTIN SCHWENK started his career as a trainee at Daimler in 1992. Since then, he has worn several hats across continents for the German automobile giant.

- Rachna Tyagi

Before he replaced Roland Folger in November 2018 as chief executive of Mercedes-Benz India, he was chief financial officer of the company in China. Schwenk has big plans for Mercedes’s silver jubilee in India. In an exclusive interview, he gives a glimpse of the carmaker’s electric vehicles and hybrids.

You have come to India from China. How are you settling in?

I just finished three months in the country, and I would say quite honestly when I came for the first time, in September, to look around and to meet my predecessor (Roland Folger), I felt immediately a warm welcome and that continued in November when I started. I always had a very good feeling about India. When I came here I found it as a country of very friendly people, very easy to access and very easy to talk to. Also, from China obviously there is some kind of a language barrier which makes it here, for me, much easier. Obviously, there is still a lot of people I cannot straightforwardly communicate [with], but it is not so difficult. So, I was very well received and I have to say I enjoy here.

How do you compare China and India?

I see that every country has its own development path. China, in terms of infrastructure, is very developed, very enhanced, and I think [in] India there are many projects going on and I see a lot of efforts being undertaken, specifically in the transportation area, and every metro city seems to be building some kind of metro system, which I think is helpful and necessary to ease the traffic in the cities. So, I see the step that China has taken has quite a strong focus on infrastructure and I can see that India also sees that as a vital necessity to bring forward infrastructure. There are a lot of similarities. With people, even though [they] look very different and speak very different, there is a lot of aspirational attitudes, there is a lot of ‘we can do’ type of attitude.