VE Commercial Vehicles, a market favorite in the light- and medium-duty commercial vehicle space, is riding on its new benchmark-setting Pro series of trucks and buses which has made a strong impact in the market. The company has added a Pro series offering to its existing products in the school bus segment and is confident of success, thanks to its overall package to the end customer. Mr. Vinod Aggarwal, CEO, VE Commercial Vehicles, briefs us on his company’s gameplan for the segment.
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VE Commercial Vehicles’ strengths in the segment
We have a very strong presence in the school bus segment offering three products in the built-up category – Skyline Pro, Skyline and Starline – ensuring a built-up bus from Eicher for every need. Schools mostly purchase built-up buses as they provide better safety, comfort and aesthetics, besides avoiding the hassles of dealing with multiple parties.. We are currently operating at 22% MS in LMD buses and plan to move further ahead in the next couple of years.
Product range
There are three products on offer from Eicher for school buses – Skyline Pro, Skyline and Starline. The Skyline Pro is a most modern bus from our side having many innovative features such as PVC-moulded roof for better aesthetics and heat insulation, integrated headlamp for better aesthetics, wider seats, LED saloon lamp with elegant Hatrack, ELR seat belts for each child, tubeless radial tyres for enhanced safety and performance, etc. The Skyline range of buses offers good comfort and style along with enhanced safety and performance. Starline offers superior value for money with a rugged body. The capacity of these buses ranges from 12 to 65 seats. The buses are available in BS III, BS IV and CNG emission norms.
Eicher sold about 4,500 school buses in 2014. Most of the buses are built at our plant at Baggad near Indore which has a capacity of about 7,500 built-up buses. We have a strong presence in the school bus segment across the country with a high penetration in southern and western markets.
Eicher was the first manufacturer to offer school bus in 1996 in collaboration with IIT Delhi and the Institute of Road Traffic Education. We have further developed our platform to suit the market requirements from time to time, and currently offer unique 37 safety features for school buses. Our safety features are not limited to children but cover bus drivers as we provide ELR seat belts, fog lamps, tilt and telescopic steering, roll-down driver window, etc. We currently offer the telematics solution as an aftermarket fitment in collaboration with Mapmyindia.
Market outlook
The industry has registered a growth of about 23 per cent this year, and we are targeting 25 per cent MS in the LMD bus category. The key factors driving the growth are the size of cities, increased focus on children’s education, opening up of new schools, the changing lifestyle of parents and more parents opting for school buses. The comfort level increasing the offering of AC buses is also contributing for more parents opting for school buses.
The Government is also making emission norms, more stringent. This contributes to the growth of the segment. The school buses would further evolve with more and more customization of buses with features like seat belts, telematics features such as live video streaming, SMS alerts to parents and tracking the position of the bus by mobile phones so as to have more safety for children.
