Signs of slowdown in India, China: Hexagon

Hyderabad: Admitting that there were definite signals of economic slowdown from different geographies around the world, Claudio Simao, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Swedish tech major Hexagon AB, on Monday said that slowdown appeared to be more pronounced in China while India was going through a little bit of slowdown as well.

"We have indications of global slowdown. But we don't know how severe this will be. There are some root causes for that. We know there is trade war between the US and China.

There is this Brexit thing over which there is a lot of uncertainty. There are unrests in many areas of the world. There is slowdown in automotive industry in Germany, an important player in the sector. We have something," Simao told The Hans India here.

He maintained that slowdown signals were emanating from different regions, not one specific region. "We see little bit slowdown here (in India). We have got clear signals from China. However, Europe and the US look stable for now," he explained.

He further said that Hexagon initiated measures to protect its business. "At Hexagon, we are taking measures to protect the business," he stated.

Pointing out that the world's economy had been growing for the past 10-11 years, he said this slowdown could be due to adjustments.

Simao however maintained that there was no terminal indicator on this. "I personally feel that it's a self-propelling crisis. (That means) we are provoking the crisis because we are talking about it so much".

Asked whether the slowdown would impact Hexagon's growth, he said Hexagon had a good second quarter (April-June 2019) and would announce results of last quarter soon.

"The good thing about Hexagon is that we have many business verticals. If there is a slowdown in one business vertical,

we compensate that with growth in other verticals," he reasoned.

"Hexagon remains resilient when it comes to its bottom line. Even if our top line gets impacted, profits will not go down. That's what happened in 2008 meltdown," he said.