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MOTORINDIA
l
September 2012
developed Neptune series engines,
expansion of transmission products
manufacturing at its Bhandara plant,
as well as establishing high pressure
aluminium castings through Al-
teams. Similarly, in order to expand
its global footprint, the company
had acquired Avia in the Czech Re-
public and recently bought out ma-
jority stake of 76 per cent in Optare
in the UK.
Later on, the company felt the
need for its own LCV platform and
decided to establish a joint venture
with Nissan of Japan. The JV’s first
LCV product has not only been suc-
cessfully conceived with its indig-
enous design, higher
payload capacity and
better fuel economy,
but has also been very
well positioned to
meet the requirements
of the Indian mar-
ket conditions. The
success of DOST is
mainly due to the com-
pany’s highly skilled
engineers who had de-
veloped the product three and a half
years ago with strong support from
the Nissan management team.
As for the sales strategy of DOST,
Ashok Leyland had identified an en-
tirely different customer approach
that offers a car-buyer experience
to an LCV customer. For instance,
it has set up a separate call centre
facility through which the DOST
customer would receive a call on the
third as well as the 30th day of pur-
chase of the vehicle, which is a first
of its kind in the commercial vehicle
segment.
Moving on, with an impending
massive expansion in the country’s
construction and mining segment,
Ashok Leyland had decided to for-
ay into the segment by establishing
a joint venture with John Deere of
USA. Following the good response
to the Leyland Deere backhoe load-
er, the company is now working on
a wheel loader as its next product.
Outlining the long-term prospects
for the Hinduja Group business ac-
tivities, Dr. Sumantran referred to
the group’s entry into three major
critical areas – electronics, environ-
mental technology and IT data link-
age. For electronics, it has a tie-up
with Continental of Germany; for
environmental technology it has es-
tablished Albonair in Germany; and
Defiance Electronics has been set up
to meet the requirements of IT and
data linkages. All the three com-
panies now meet different require-
ments of the fast-growing Indian
auto sector.
Stressing the need for cost control,
he cited the economically priced,
fully integrated and sophisticated
environmental system currently
made by Albonair. The company
has already obtained a few patents
for its innovative product and has
also has bagged major contracts
from a leading commercial vehicle
manufacturer and an off-highway
vehicle manufacturer in Europe.
Apart from providing CAD/CAM
design development, Defiance pro-
vides an array of solutions to cus-
tomers such as Telematics, Analyt-
ics, Bluetooth, etc. The company
also does market research for Nissan
at the global level through its Social
Media Analytical Centre which is
basically used for tracking customer
opinions at various levels, and has
become a rich source of instant feed-
back.
In conclusion, Dr. Sumantran ob-
served that, with increasing compe-
tition in the commercial vehicle seg-
ment in the country, acceleration in
technology growth and product ma-
turity as well as a well-designed de-
livery system, it will be the end cus-
tomers who would benefit from the
growing competition, as they would
have much better quality products
on offer, which would certainly be a
customer delight.
w
Started with just 23 engineers for the
development of DOST, today the com-
pany has 450 engineers extending
their all-round support for the product
in India.
vehicle zone