Ashok Leyland Managing Director and CEO Shenu Agarwal, Executive Chairman Dheeraj Hinduja and Switch Mobility CEO Mahesh Babu addressing the media on the occasion of company’s 75th anniversary in Chennai.
| Photo Credit: N. Anand
Ashok Leyland Ltd (ALL), which is currently celebrating 75th years of service, is planning to expand its global footprint and enter new markets in a much more aggressive manner, said the company top officials.
“We are going to expand our global footprint in much more aggressive manner with the new products and new technologies that we are investing in,” said ALL Managing Director and CEO Shenu Agarwal during an interaction.
The company also has plans to expand its distributors network to attain its vision to be among the Top 10 global commercial vehicle players in the near future from the current 20th position, he said.
“On the electric buses segment, you can see us going into European market quite aggressively and that will create a good footprint for us in Europe and UK,” said ALL Executive Chairman Dheeraj Hinduja.
“We are excited about the launch of E1 bus in the European markets in the next few months. Breaking into European market is not that easy as it has strongest competitors with various established brands and networks,” he said.
Asserting that the market dynamics is changing with the roll out of more vehicles with alternate fuels, he said that customers themselves were willing to try new brands, if you can offer products with right features at right price point.
“Switch Mobility has started making some breakthrough. European bus has been developed on world class standard and with product like that we will definitely enter into lot of European markets. When you see 26 countries part of EU, a lot of trade can happen. So, we are not constrained to traditional markets alone. As we move forward, we will keep moving into new markets,” he said.
Mentioning that the growth rate of vehicles in the rest of the world (Indonesia, Vietnam and West Asia) is faster, he said: “It makes sense for us to keep an eye on those markets and plan for those markets as opposed to going into very competitive and high-end markets where it might take many more years to achieve breakthrough.”
Mr. Dheeraj also said that they had developed Avatar and Bada Dost with the mindset of taking it to international markets.
“What is critical is for us is to create the right network outside of India and find appropriate distributors and markets where we are not present. In the last 16 months, we have appointed 12-13 distributors in the African markets, some of them have their own assembly facility as well. All of this will help us. We are constantly looking at new markets,” he said.
