Polco India, following its tie-up with Belgium-based Versus Omega, has started making inroads into India’s nascent curtain sider market, reaching out across the chain from the body cover segment to operators in the truck and trailer sector, reports Rajesh Rajgor
One of India’s largest manufacturers of body covers for two-wheelers, three-wheelers and passenger vehicles, Polco India has extended its fondness for design, aesthetics and quality in the commercial vehicle segment. Founded in 2002 by two of Mumbai’s leading entrepreneurial minds, Bhavesh Khanna and Rohit Khanna, Polco India has earned excellent reputation in the ‘protection cover’ segment. Be it pet covers, shoe covers, helmet covers, tractor covers or auto-rickshaw covers, exclusive quality and design make the company’s products the most promising in the industry.
In an exclusive interaction with MOTORINDIA, Rohit Khanna, one of the two directors at Polco India, reminisces: “A few years ago, Bhavesh and I saw a luxury truck covered by tarpaulin on the roof and a broken MS container. From that moment we realised that trucks deserve to be fabricated with a side curtain that enhances their charm while moving on the road and increase their performance.” The idea led to the formation of a new vertical for ‘truck curtains’ in 2017 under Polco India’s umbrella. Elaborating on the new vertical and the strategy behind the foreign collaboration, Rohit says, “With our new vertical, we partnered with Versus Omega, a Belgium-based company to provide their products.”
“We purchase the technology from them and supply to the truck and trailer customers here in India. These are patented by Versus Omega. Our sole purpose is to bring efficiency and new-age technology combined with our vision for aesthetics, design and quality to the trucking segment that has so far been used to a hard body look,” he adds. In the last three years, operating out of Bhumi World at Bhiwandi near Mumbai, Polco India has successfully delivered two types of patented systems, namely, Penta 100® (sliders) and Trike® (buckles) in the FMCG, gas and towing industries.
Product Offerings and Localisation
For the uninitiated, there are a lot of commercial vehicles equipped with PVC side curtains, which are traditional curtain siders. This traditional curtain runs through a top rail and is fixed with buckles at the bottom. With the tie-up, Polco India-Versus Omega provide trucks and trailer operators with Penta slider systems focused on faster and more efficient loading and unloading of goods enabled with Trike, the curtain roller. “A Penta slider system has rollers both at the top and bottom of the curtain, which run through a top and bottom rail. Therefore, our patented Penta slider doesn’t need the buckles anymore. The patented Trike roller has three rollers. The two vertical rollers make sure they will slide in the right direction; the horizontal roller will guarantee they won’t block. The position of the third roller is responsible for the success of Trike,” elaborates Rohit.
Today, Polco India offers the entire range from the slider system, sliding roof, back door curtains (fix and rolling) and side railings amongst other tailor-made variants. Explains Rohit: “Despite Versus Omega having advanced systems in Europe, they do not push standard products from the catalogues. They understand the importance of custom-building and encourage us to customise as per customers’ requirements. Adopting this customer-centric approach, we have done quite a few trucks. We realise the initial years are going to be more of hand-holding the customers as the whole concept is new to India. The curtain sider market in India is at a stage where customers are still gauging the advantages of the products. Once they understand, they challenge us to solve many problems like theft on road, difficulty in loading and unloading, making the vehicle energy-efficient and improving the turnaround time.”
In order to ensure that the quality is not compromised and yet the product is delivered with a cost-effective pricing, Polco India has balanced the materials involved in developing the product quite well. “While highly precision parts like rollers come from Versus Omega, curtains are manufactured here in India. With us taking care of colours, patterns, prints and sizes, the local content and the lead time to deliver the product is lower today than when we had started in 2017. Depending on sizes, print or no print, parts to be used and the installation, it takes 15-20 days from design to delivery of one variant. Once recurring orders start, the timeframe reduces further,” Rohit informs.
Nourishing the Segment
Polco India is aware that the industry will take a couple of years to mature to the solutions they are offering. However, once the transporters and trailer manufacturers understand that the curtain sliders can help them with speedy loading-unloading, provide independent access to all parts of the loads (a boon to parcel load segments) and save fuel by ensuring faster turnaround time, the demand will only grow. “At present we do around 100 units a year which can grow to 250-300 units a year in the next two years. We have delivered results for customers in automotive and beverage segments and now we are targeting palletized goods to further grow in the market,” Rohit says.
“Even though the contribution from this segment is merely 5% to our revenues today, we anticipate it to grow to the tune of 20% by 2025. This is the same we experienced in the car body cover segment when we started and today we are reaping the benefits as it forms a substantial part of our revenues,” he adds. The company has made concentrated efforts to work with truck operators and trailer manufacturers for maintenance back-up in case of emergency. “We have tied up with trailer manufacturers for spare parts or maintenance back-up. The product itself will not have a problem but if any damage happens due to an accident en route or operation mishandling, we are quick to provide spare parts that are available with us,” Rohit shares. “The customer will not suffer at any given point,” he assures. At present Polco India carries out the assembly of curtain siders from their two plants in Bhiwandi. These two facilities put out 3,500 body covers a day jointly, largely for the non-truck verticals (two-wheelers and passenger vehicles), but with the truck trailer manufacturers and operators fast maturing to the robust, durable curtain siders that leads them to higher load volume, better fuel efficiency and faster turnaround time, Polco India is poised for expansion and rapidly making space in the nascent truck curtain sider market.