From its very look and attractive interior, the iT09 would compare well with any of the top end luxury buses sold in India today. But the positioning of the bus is not against the Volvo’s or the Mercedes. Interestingly the iT09 is targeted at the customer who typically buys a chassis from Ashok Leyland and does the body building at one of the private bus body building units for inter-city application. The idea is to provide a fully-built solution to the customer instead of having to deal with multiple entities.
The iT09 is a 12-metre inter-city coach on Ashok Leyland chassis with both AC and non-AC options. The bus comes fitted with the 180 hp, H series AL engines with seating capacity of 40 for the AC version and 36 for non-AC. It has luggage space of nearly 8 cubic metres. The rigid structure complies to the new regulation of roll-over norm for safety expected to be mandated in India in the near future. The bus is priced at Rs. 22 lakhs plus taxes for bus body building, excluding the cost of the chassis.
Analysing the luxury bus segment in India, we have the top-end dominated by Volvo, with Mercedes making an entry. Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors have also launched products with similar features. The Luxura from Ashok Leyland and the Hispano from Tata Motors are pitted against the Volvo’s and Mercedes but at a lesser price point. But the top-end luxury segment is still limited in numbers. The market size is expected to be around 500 to 600 units per annum.
The larger numbers still remain in the mass market luxury bus segment, which is expected to be around 25,000 to 30,000 units per annum. Customers in this segment still continue to buy chassis from the manufacturer and build the bus bodies at an independent body building unit. It is this segment that AL and Irizar-TVS are targeting.
Instead of having to deal with multiple vendors, customers will now have a single point of contact for sales, service and spares. Also typically the time taken from buying the chassis to putting it on road is around 2 months and this is a very unproductive time for the customer. With a fully built bus, the customer can buy the vehicle and start operating from day 1. It makes more business sense.
