‘Volvo trucks benefitted from mining sector revival’

CHENNAI : Bullish about the Indian market, Kamal Bali Managing Director of Volvo Group India spoke to this reporter about rising demand for Volvo trucks, the firm’s upcoming innovation centre and other issues:

Though sales are improving, the commercial vehicle segment is still under pressure. How is the situation for Volvo?
Volvo Group India’s business includes trucks, buses and construction equipment.  Almost 40 per cent  of our revenue comes from the truck segment while construction equipment segment contribute 30 per cent and buses another 10 per cent. The remaining 20 per cent comes from our services. In trucks and construction equipment, we have reached our pre-Covid sales figure in September. Till June we lost almost 50 per cent of our business, but things started improving from July onwards. However, in bus segment we are still at 20 - 25 cent of pre-Covid level sales. Demand will remain low for now as people are 
reluctant to travel by public transport.

What has pushed the demand for your trucks? 
Volvo trucks are mainly used in mining activities. As the mining sector opened up there was huge pent up demand which brought good traction for us . Adding to it, recent  reforms in the coal mining sector have also boosted our sales.

Your expectations from the upcoming festive season?
Looking at the encouraging demand, we are expecting a marginal growth of about 5% to 7% in our truck business during the festive season (September to December period) over last year. At times even if there is demand, customers face problems due to lack of retail finance from banks. To resolve the issue, we have Volvo Financial Services to provide financing solutions to customers. Besides, we are also hopeful that the festive season will bring more traction to our construction equipment segment.

How is the overall business scenario for construction equipment?
Thanks to a number of government projects and the national infrastructure pipeline, we have been receiving good response. We will do reasonably well and probably will be able to reach last year’s figures in this segment.

Digital transformation has been the buzz word during the Covid times...We have been continuously 
investing in strengthening our digitization and innovation wing. We have been working on artificial intelligence, embedded electronics and very soon our Innovation Centre, which is coming up at Banglore, will become operational. This is our first innovation centre outside of Sweden. We are bullish about Indian market and  we have started exporting engines from our Pithampur plant to other countries. We also have plans to introduce a fossil fuel free version of all our products by 2030.