Concrete Actions to Combat Covid-19 After Effects

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is posing immense challenges for the Construction Equipment sector. Debasis Bhattacharya, Head – Marketing, Sales & Product Support at AJAX Engineering Pvt. Ltd.delves into the aspects that the equipment market can undertake to mitigate the adverse effects of the pandemic on the economy and the sector as well.

The Construction equipment industry is witnessing its worst ever phase due to the slowdown in construction activity. The national lockdown and Covid-19 outbreak have greatly added to the woes of equipment manufacturers. It has thus become imperative to adapt and adjust to the ongoing situation. Elaborating on this aspect, Debasis Bhattacharya, Head – Marketing, Sales & Product Support at AJAX Engineering Pvt. Ltd. opines, “AJAX has always evolved over time by adapting to the needs of its customers with a clear and consistent goal towards becoming the most customer-centric organization with a strong customer focus.”

Acting to this uncertain period of pandemic, Ajax is following a resilient, adaptive and competitive approach coupled with a strong focus on the capabilities needed to succeed in the constantly changing market dynamics. The workforce at Ajax is facing the unpredictable situation with a new set of collaborative principles and coherent thought process as a cohesive effort to engage with customers.Debasis Bhattacharya elaborates, “We add value to our customers, close to over 18,000 satisfied customers. They have seen, realised and experienced the value we have brought in.  And we will keep on adding value to our customers. AJAX keeps in touch with all its stakeholders via digital channels & leverage digital solutions to engage customers, provide support and add value-propositions that are unique to them.”

AJAX has leveraged its capabilities with a strong network of over 100 touch points & more than 30 dealers with triple S facilities – sales, service and spare parts. Technology influx has helped Ajax to meet the ongoing challenges and align itself with the fast-changing industry trends amidst lockdown.Describing the focus of innovation at AJAX, Bhattacharya says,“AJAX has always strived to be a ‘360° concreting solutions provider’ to its customers and is moving towards artificial intelligence and other advanced manufacturing concepts.”

Rebound strategy

According to leading financial rating agencies, India would witness a big slump in the current and coming quarter, however, it is all set to bounce back post recovery of this Covid-19 pandemic. This would drastically affect the construction equipment sales in India that are expected to drop very significantly during FY 2020-2021due to this coronavirus outbreak. The CE industry is also set to bear the brunt of the effects of COVID-19. This pandemic has dented the economy thereby very badly impacting overall the CE industry growth with severe repercussions on the future growth prospects. But, the full financial impact of the coronavirus crisis cannot be gauged right now as it will be too early to assess. Even after the crisis is brought under control and construction works start to roll, the upcoming monsoon will be another big blow that will add further onus onto the growth and severely impede the construction works likely from June 2020 onwards.

On facing the slowdown blues, Bhattacharya adds, “To set the ball-rolling, AJAX has come up with the rebound strategy, a detailed business continuity management plan that enlists a set of protocols & standard guidelines that would comply with the newly established norms and regulations by our Government for safe and best practices. This would be religiously followed in the factories, offices and business establishments of AJAX pan India.” He further adds, “Organizational preparedness is the real key to combat post COVID-19 lockdown with resilience and resourcefulness, AJAX will redo the Value-stream mapping across their supply-chains as this would deem to be a right opportunity to rethink, revisit and reinforce our supply-chains.”

1. i) Channel partners: Distribution strategy/ delivery model as a defragmented channel structure by integrating dealer network over the digital platform is being contemplated by AJAX.
2. ii) Efficiency accelerators: Firstly, with social distancing norms at factories, logistics, and warehouses, the need for reducing people density across the supply chain has become a mandate now and AJAX would chart out a plan by deploying ‘alternate shift’ practices in the factories. Secondly, with the elimination of non-value-added activities that would improve the value of its products and services, AJAX would look to optimize direct and indirect cost that would result in significant cost reduction, strengthening cash flow and emerging from this downturn with a stronger and more competitive profile.
3. iii)   Digitization: As the entire nation is struggling to cope with this outbreak and all sectors face some form of disruption, Covid-19 is silently shaping business transformation. AJAX is active in the digital platform and maintains a strong digital footprint,which helps to underscore the importance of digital transformation by providing unparalleled opportunities to offer personalized service to customers. Customer focus, as a way of life is the basis for AJAX’s digital transformation decisions.

Challenges and Support

Liquidity is one of the major challenges that has adversely impacted construction equipment sales as well as the rate at which projects are executed, observes Bhattacharya. It is one of the major areas of challenges the CE industry is facing today. There have been some delinquencies like contractors not getting paid by the principal clients. 

Customers have become hesitant to purchase new equipment, especially first-time buyers.  But Ajax expects reasonable amount of business in the near future. “There is no dearth of projects but financial closure has become an alarming issue. Delinquencies, especially contractors not getting paid by principal clients is a concern as is the diversion of funds from infra-related projects to social spending. As a way forward, Bhattacharya emphasizes on the fact that the CE industry is looking for a good stimulus in infrastructure and housing industry to pave the way for the economy to get rolling and to reinvigorate confidence in the construction sector.

Product innovations

AJAX self-loading concrete mixers are versatile and have hydraulic sensing, meaning a pressure transducer and a device to add the weigh batching of aggregate, cement and water. AJAX has been focusing on improving the accuracy of weigh batching that is very critical in the quality of the concrete. Of late, we have come up with a load cell-based weigh batching system (patent pending).

AJAX also launched a first-of-its-kind next-gen self-propelled boom pump, SPBP25ZX. This patent-pending product has been designed to handle tough terrain and manoeuvre narrow roads and job sites at ease, and effectively uses its full boom length to revolutionize the way concreting is being done in housing and infrastructure projects.

AJAX slip form paver SPX1204, the first indigenous paver designed and manufactured in India has been incorporated with high-quality components and features on par with any of the pavers offered by the global players. This paver has flexibility to offer paving width varying from 3.5m to 12m.

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