Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) Pvt Ltd., will roll out Bharat Benz-branded medium-duty sub-9 tonne truck from its Oragadam plant near Chennai next year and plans to enter markets such as Peru, Chile and Mexico.
The project titled Titan would be the third product from the stable and would be in 6-9 tonnes category, said Marc Llistosella, head of Daimler Truck Asia at a round table with Asian journalists.
“The heavy-duty truck generation is full-fledged and now we have all the products on stage from 6 tonnes to 49 tonnes. We can now start selling in other markets and expansion is going on,” he said.
The company has so far sold 49,000 units made at the Oragadam plant, including exports of 7,000 units, over four years.
“We are currently at 52,000 or 53,000 units. It is quite an achievement in four years,” he said referring to the truck output.
The company is expanding its dealership network in the country, he said. It has more than 100 sales touch-points in India. “We have now started the third wave of dealership in rural areas where there is growth,” he said.
DICV exports trucks under the Fuso brand in Africa and the Middle-East. It has plans to enter other markets such as Peru, Chile and Mexico, Mr. Llistosella said. By the end of 2016, it would be present in 30 markets and add 10 more markets by 2017, according to him.
2017 break-evenDICV is aiming to achieve break-even by the third quarter of 2017, said its CEO and Managing Director, Erich Nesselhauf.
According to him, the Indian economy was ‘extremely’ challenging. “We are ready to do anything to achieve break even. But, there are four challenges to achieving it - GST, BS IV, the scrappage scheme and overloading. All these things we are ready with. But we have to synchronise it. A delay of few months in implementation of GST will be good.”
Sales affectedWolfgang Bernhard, Member of Board of management Daimler AG, said that the sales volumes of DICV in India had been affected due to ‘uncertainty’ around the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the BS-IV norms.
Though the company started Q1 of this fiscal with a 26 per cent rise in sales, he said that the uncertainty impacted the Q2 performance. Sales contracted about 0.3 per cent for DICV in the two quarters put together.
“The second quarter was not good as the Indian government announced GST without naming the number (rate of GST) and the date when it takes effect. This has caused risks and uncertainty in marketplace. Buyers are postponing their decisions,” he told reporters.
“Therefore, our request to the Indian government is to remove this uncertainty as soon as possible, and to please tell us the number and date.Right now, Indian market is declining We are (in the same position as) last year. All the good prospects have been wiped out,” he said.
(The writer is in Hannover Germany at the invitation of the Daimler India Commercial Vehicles.)
