In India, legitimate bearing manufacturers have long complained about widespread counterfeiting. Up to 40% of the bearings sold on India's secondary market are counterfeit.

Last week, Mumbai police raided a bearing factory at Nagdevi Cross Road, seizing allegedly counterfeit ball bearings and counterfeit packaging. Brands being counterfeited included all the best-known in India: SKF, Tata, NBR and Timken. The company's owner was arrested and the factory was shut down.

Manufacturers have been reporting the known distributors of counterfeit bearings to police for some time. A series of raids in early February rooted out some of the resellers. Three weeks ago, more distributors were raided and over USD $200,000 in inventory was seized.

Many of those distributors immediately began identifying their manufacturer sources for the counterfeit bearings, sparking this latest raid.

A recent study by ORG Marg found that counterfeiting in India is so widespread that 85% of customers who stopped buying SKF bearings did so because of counterfeits. They are so pervasive that retail customers have lost confidence what they are receiving is actually an SKF bearing.