Vehicle safety reforms, emission norms are expected to help accelerate India's position as a leading automotive market, says a KPMG report.

As per the 17th annual KPMG International Global Automotive Executive Survey (GAES), almost half of the respondents from India believe that legislation/regulation may influence the developments and trends in the Indian automotive industry.

"Changes in reforms of vehicle safety, emissions, end-of life of vehicle, etc are expected to help accelerate India's position as a leading automotive market, as well as a preferred destination for investment," the report said.
 
Besides, automotive industry executives agree that connectivity and digitalisation could collectively be the most important trend that could hold through 2016 to 2025.

"Connectivity and digitisation are likely to impact all automotive companies in India. Volume and mass market manufacturers are also expected to be affected as they are prone to lose customer relationships in the future to new entrants (likely from the ICT sector) in this space," Rajeev Singh, Partner and Head, Automotive sector, KPMG in India said.

Emerging trends in the Indian market indicate increasing preference by users to remain connected while using/driving their vehicles, he added.

"Few applications already aid in establishing connectivity between smartphones and vehicles. Data is going to play a key role in the service and marketing of vehicles to Indian customers," Singh said.

New business models such as ride sharing, platform consolidation to reduce cost of manufacturing, contract manufacturing, and emergence of Big Data to understand the unknowns, will pose both as an opportunity as well as a challenge, he added.

"In a decade's time market share in India is likely to be decided on data and revenues generated by the customer while driving in fully connected vehicles rather than just selling cars on high volume basis." Singh said.