Our aim is to be the one-stop shop for all concrete equipment needs.

Kalpesh Soni
GM Marketing,
KYB Conmat.

“We are fast expanding our global footprints and our continuous investment in technology and human resources will support our endeavours to become a global leader in the near future.”

How do you assess the growth of construction equipment market in the next five years?
India’s infrastructure sector is poised to grow significantly with the increasing demand for development of key infrastructure projects such as roads and highways, rural connectivity, urban infrastructure including metro rail projects, ports and airports, industrial corridors, smart city projects, etc. Investment and implementation of key projects would boost the country’s infrastructure development which augurs well for equipment manufacturers.

What do you think the major challenges in this growth scenario?
We believe the greatest challenge for companies today is not keeping up with ones competitors, but with one’s own customers. Business used to be about getting customers to do what you wanted them to do. But customers don’t accept this anymore. They don’t like to be told what to do. They want relationships based on reciprocity, transparency and authenticity.

We want to drive the market – we don’t want to be driven by it. Our guiding principle is; Change the market before it changes you. We have been changing the products, processes, customer’s expectations along with their mind-sets at an amazingly rapid pace. But there are few focus points which will never change – our commitment towards customers, our passion for technology, our determination for quality and excellence, our primary concern for the planet, now and for the decades
to come.

What has been your performance so far and also tell us about your road plans for the coming years?
KYB-Conmat aims to be a major contributor to the country’s growth story. We have seen consistent growth since 2015 due to the widespread acceptability of our products in the market. We recently celebrated the rollout of our 1000th transit mixer from our Vadodara facility. 2017 has been good to us and we expect 2018 to be even better. As more and more projects are being announced – be it for roadways, ports, airports, real estate, affordable housing, irrigation, etc. we are aggressively working with our customers to be part of it all. Concrete is the future and we are all geared up to do our bit to make India an infrastructure-rich nation.

We are also looking to expand our market and reach, both domestically and internationally. We also wish to explore unchartered territories in the international market. We have some new products currently in the development stage, which we are planning to launch soon. At the same time, it will also be our endeavor to upgrade and keep our existing product offerings up-to-date with the latest technology. Our aim is to the one-stop shop for all concrete equipment needs of a customer and we are working on front foot to achieve that.
Apart from that, we will also be associating with new channel partners to increase our presence and to be closer to our customers. Within a short span of time, we will have our large presence in all the major cities across pan India.

How geared up is KYB Conmat to address the surge in demand for high capacity plants?
There is a surge in the demand for road paving machinery of longer widths of operation, as the contractors prefer to complete the pavement process in a single pass. This creates a need for concrete production to be done at higher rates, requiring concrete batching plants with higher capacities. We sensed this opportunity, and have upgraded our manufacturing facilities to produce higher capacity plants. We have sold over forty nos. of 120-240 cu m plants in last one year.

Brief us on your unique initiatives in enhancing back up support?
After sales service is one of the most important criteria in construction equipment market, and KYB-Conmat offers complete after care solutions to the customers, who are increasingly looking beyond the product purchases. They expect the total solution, right from the point of sales till the project completion. We at KYB-Conmat believe that the first machine may be sold by sales personals, but subsequent machines are necessarily sold by service engineers. We have much higher repeat customer rate than the market standards. In fact, our loyal and committed customer base helps us in selling to new customers.

What are the solutions offered by KYB Conmat and their unique features?
Our Rack & Pinion elevators have been designed considering Indian working conditions and global safety standards. It offers reduced energy consumption and operating cost, increased reliability and uptime, user friendly controls and centralized monitoring system. It has a robust triple safety system comprising electromagnetic braking, centrifugal braking and safety devise to boost user confidence.

We introduced twin shaft compulsory mixer in its full range of automatic batching plants seven years ago, starting with the smallest 20 cu m mobile to 240 cu m stationary plants. Our major strength is our proprietary SCADA based software BatchCon, which is perfect and user friendly interface between men and machine. Our plants require minimal foundation, minimal set up and installation time, and provide better and faster mixing, hence offering a faster payback. Due to all above, we are awarded with ‘Sarvottam Manufacturer of Concrete Batching Plant in India’ by Builders Association of India in 2015.

We offer exclusive range of standard and customized high performance concrete paving machines for roads and canals. The vibratory cylinder provide better compaction and enables higher rate of production for faster completion of projects, while our rugged and user friendly operator controls, coupled with energy efficient electrical drive system provide better operator comfort and increase productivity, and hence better ROI. Today, over 1,000 paving machines are working satisfactorily in the field, making KYB-Conmat one of the largest canal paving machine manufacturers in the world.
We have also successfully introduced transit mixers ranging from 6 cu m to 8 cu m, with slave engines and PTO in Indian market.

What has been the impact of GST on your performance?
GST is bound to represent a win-win situation for both the construction equipment sellers as well as the buyers. GST driven by the principle of one nation, one tax is expected to unify the country economically. One may think that the tax burden has increased with the GST but it has essentially brought several positive changes and consequences for the sector. For instance, until GST was introduced, all heavy equipment used to have a different tax structure in different states. While some states used to levy entry taxes, octroi etc., some demanded entry forms and some didn’t.

This always led to huge confusion in equipment selling and moving it from state to the other. GST will put an end to this hurdle along with all its revised GST laws in coming days.

Tell us about your R&D?
Research and development is very highly valued at KYB-Conmat. We have a R&D center in India, in Vadodara, and in Japan. We wish to make path-breaking innovations a norm in order to best serve our customers. Innovations are very important in today’s competitive and fast-paced market to stay relevant. Our R&D is working in full force on some great products, while also focusing on upgrading our existing products, which we believe, are sure to take the market by storm.

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