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Upbeat over the market response for its less-than-a-year-old roll out of heavy commercial vehicles (HCV), Mahindra Navistar Automotives Limited (MNAL) has embarked on a near-complete spread of market-cum-after-sales service reach across India this year.
The company is hoping its HCV annual sales number to reach 50,000 units, the full capacity of its Chakan manufacturing plant near Pune in three to four years from the present 5,000.
By the end of the current financial year, the company will have 98 per cent of the market footprint backed by 1,800 service points across the India, MNAL managing director Nalin Mehta said here on Thursday. The market journey of this 51:49 joint venture company between Mahindra & Mahindra and US-based International Truck and Engine Corporation with present 2.8 per cent share of the HCV market, which is completely dominated by Tata and Ashok Leyland, and will take it to the 12-13 per cent level when it will be able to sell heavy trucks at full capacity, according to him. While the company has sold 5,000 units, 1000 of them in Andhra Pradesh alone, in less than a year, Nalin Mehta, however, refused to divulge the sales target for the current year. He, however, maintained that they will outperform the overall industry growth of 9-10 per cent expected in the next three to four years in the HCV segment.
The expected outperformance of these vehicles over the competition will come on the back of their overall performance, driver comfort, service and higher time warranty offered by the company, he said.
It also expect the sale of light commercial vehicles (LCVs), built at its Andhra Pradesh plant, to touch 20,000 units from the present 12,000 units in the next three to four years. Refusing to give a break up of the expected sales revenues from HCVs either, Mehta said their target was to become a Rs 10,000-crore company from Rs 1,200-crore last year without giving any time line.
He said that the overall market sentiment was expected to turn positive from September this year.
Responding to a question, he said all the products ranging from 25-tonne to 40-tonne capacity had been generating good demand and it will be their endeavour to come up with integrated solutions for customisation of both HCV and LCVs to specific purposes, including cement concrete mixers and ambulances.
The green-field Chakan plant was built at an investment of Rs 750 crore as against the financial sanction of Rs 1,050 crore. The paint shop is currently capable of handling 50,000 units annually and the company is in the process of ramping up the capacity of other divisions of the facility to the same level, according to Mehta.
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