As the new Business Head at Volvo Buses for South Asia and Vice President of Volvo Bus Corporation, Mr. Suresh Chettiar has more than two decades of experience with Volvo Buses.
Vice President of Volvo Bus Corporation
Having successfully managed the introduction of UD buses in 2014-15, Mr. Chettiar reveals in a formal chat how steadfast is Volvo Buses in its growth plans in India. For him, it goes beyond business because the brand embodies offering the best in comfort, style and safety to its customers.
Excerpts:
What is the latest at Volvo Buses?
At Volvo Buses, we believe in bringing meaningful changes to the lives of the people who buy our buses. That has always been the one driving force for us globally as well as in India. In the last decade and a half, Volvo has grown stronger as a brand in India. It is about how the common man relates to our brand, making it synonymous with transport. Our long-term strategy in being consistent with our services has enabled us to retain our position as the best business partner to our customers.
Let us say city bus operators today are looking at themselves vis a vis how they can co-exist with other options – be it a city bus, long-distance one, train or taxi – there are technological innovations that we are able to integrate. And therein lies the fact that we are touching the lives of the people.
It is even more exciting now because the market is at the cusp of major transformation of moving on to a certain level of public transport. And this is in complete alignment with the Volvo strategy. We have a good range of products that can address both the urban and long-distance needs of transportation, and we are in a place to fulfill any additional demands that may come from the regulatory authorities.
What will Volvo Buses see you bringing to the table?
The fact that I am in this business is partly because I as Suresh and what we do have merged into one. Apart from that, professionally there are many things that drive me, such as running this like an Indian organization with a strong team, and we are able to break the traditional barriers.
When I look at the market today as compared to when we began operations in India, we are in 36 cities where people are opting to travel by city buses on a daily basis. I see it as a clear indication that if one gets their act right and the eco system is willing to accept it, then changes can be brought in. The most important thing is that it is possible to break the myth: Can a high quality air-conditioned bus be owned and operated by a local operator or by an Indian STU? That’s the first myth we have broken after much hard work. The second is if it is possible to be economically relevant for the user fraternity. To that I would say we do not add to the complexity of their situation.
What is happening with your value segment, the UD buses?
UD represents that part of business to clearly cater to the specific needs of customers from different segments. The latest is that we are now delivering 
vehicles to the BRT corridor, and our deliveries will be completed by the first quarter. At the same time, we have engaged a couple of vehicles at one of the airports for tarmac applications and they are coming along in a good way. Initial seat volumes are being deployed now. It is a highly integrated part of our strategy. Now we are waiting for the start of this corridor in Dharwad, Karnataka.
How would you say the idea of hybrids will evolve, especially with India deciding to leapfrog to electro-mobility?
We look forward to see larger alignment with the stakeholders on the hybrid front. Our first two vehicles have been on the road for around two years now. We have already clocked 35 per cent lower fuel consumption, and with that we should see a benefit of roughly around 50 per cent lower emissions.
We realise that the Central Government today looks at pure electrics as the way to go. With our electro-mobility experience, Volvo today has more than 3,000-3,500 vehicles on the road in different countries. We strongly believe in pursuing it with a systems approach because this is not a standalone product but other ingredients too, including the charging infrastructure, the designing of the roads and others.
Today, the technology is evolving to a level which can be leveraged to a larger possibility of zoning. Many countries now are working with the zoning concept where they may want the core of the city to be noise free or certain roads which can be designed to be both noise and pollution free. Then come connected services. When all of these technologies come together we can leverage electro-mobility in a big way.
Coming back to hybrids, we still believe that these are an integral part of the electro-mobility eco system. A great challenge could be that of how much can the product be scaled in terms of charging infrastructure. And that is where the hybrids come in because they probably can offer wider kilometer range of coverage. Hence, we are in a 50:50 position when it comes to India. But we need technological standardizations in order to scale the products.
We also think public transport should be included as an integral part of the smart city program. Yet, there is no clear mention of mobility, but the fact remains that public transport first of all has a direct co-relation to how the economic development of any urban space will happen. The impact of mobility has to be calculated.
What will be the ideal scenario for Volvo Buses?
Ideally, we would like the rolling stock also to be considered as part of the infrastructure. The best practices that Volvo has forged along with different stakeholders for electric vehicles in a certain city in Europe includes the city authorities, municipalities, technology providers, the bus companies, charging infrastructure and the universities which include it as a concept to study and understand the passenger behavior. I think it is possible to do the same in India.
Volvo Group has always been commended on its training centre. Tell us the latest developments on that front.
We insist that every driver should come and get trained here. Over the years, we have trained around a lakh of drivers for both buses and trucks. Of this, bus drivers would be about 35,000 or so. Today the bus or truck operators do not ask why they should send their drivers to us. It is now logical for him to expect that he needs to go through this process for every product that he is buying.
Today there is huge demand for Volvo-trained drivers in the market.