With four new heavy duty trucks VE Commercial Vehicles to grow market share and turnover

Chennai : Growing the market share steadily, filling up the gaps in its product portfolio with the launch of four heavy duty trucks, commercial vehicle maker VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd will be closing this fiscal with a handsome topline growth, said a top company official.

The company is a joint venture between Sweden’s Volvo group and India’s Eicher Motors. This year marks a significant milestone - 15 years of operations in the country.

“Last year our turnover was about Rs.19,000 crore. During the first half of the current year the turnover was Rs.10,000 crore,” Vinod Aggarwal, Managing Director and CEO told IANS.

He said the company logged 24 per cent growth in the first half as compared to the previous year’s corresponding period. Generally business performance in the second half will be better than the first half. Overall the commercial vehicle industry is growing well, he added.

The heavy duty commercial vehicles segment is growing at a good pace and the expectation is that it would reach about 2.90 lakh units this year. Aggrawal said VE Commercial’s market share in the heavy duty vehicle segment has increased to nine per cent this year from the previous year’s figure of 8.3 per cent.

In the light and medium duty trucks, the company’s market share this year is about 34 per cent up from earlier year’s 30-31 per cent. VE Commercial, which has been gradually increasing its market share, on Monday launched four new heavy duty trucks under the Eicher brand.

“We take great pride in introducing the Non-Stop range of HD Trucks that will set new industry standards, representing our dedication not only to our customers' success but also towards improving efficiency and cost of logistics in our country. Backed by our industry-leading Uptime Center and MyEicher App, this new range will deliver more productivity and profitability for Eicher customers,” Aggrawal said.

Queried about the company’s delayed entry into the heavy duty segment in a major way Aggrawal said, two major players were ruling the market and it was difficult for a new player to break into the market when the technology was low.

He said the two players were having over 90 per cent market share and now it has come down. “We have to convert more and more of those customers to our brand. This has been happening as we are increasing our market share by about one per cent,” Aggrawal said.

He said now the trucks are connected and monitored to see their uptime is higher. “We have strong analytics software to see the condition of the truck. We can advise the truck driver about the problem and do preventive maintenance," Aggrawal remarked.

Apart from about 450 dealers, the company also offers ‘Eicher Site Support’, a service designed to provide support at remotely located sites. The company has established over 240 sites, serving over 150 customers and supporting over 12,000 vehicles directly at the customers sites.

While the domestic market for the trucks is growing, Aggrawal said the export market has been affected and as a result the overall volume for the industry will not scale top height. On the other hand, he doesn’t see an impact on the company’s export of components as the vehicle markers overseas are rolling out their models. VE Commercial ships out about Rs.450 crore worth of automobile components.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at [email protected])