We have just opened a training center at Pitampur Plant where we are not only training our technocrats, but also our operators.
Alok Jha Director, Sales & Marketing, India & SAARC, CASE CE What is your focus of CASE at Excon this year? It is not the product, but the customer that we are focusing.
– Alok Jha
Director, Sales & Marketing, India & SAARC, CASE CE
What is your focus of CASE at Excon this year?
It is not the product, but the customer that we are focusing. Product is just one of the elements serving a customer. Organizations like us are only into serving the customers. We get our revenue from serving the customer, we get our profits from serving the customer and we come up with product and augmented products to serve the customer.
There are products on display which serves the low-end of the spectrum and relatively high-end of the spectrum. When I say low-end of the spectrum, it is generally the highways who buy backhoe loaders and compactors for the infrastructure requirements. But when we talk about high-end applications, its large the mining equipments like the graders and dozers and we also have the premium excavators like the 22-tonne. So this time in Excon, we are not selling products.
The 50HP is the new one which we have launched. Essentially, the backhoe loader is categorized into three categories – 50HP, 75HP and 90HP class. Different class has different requirements. 50HP goes for very versatile operations like municipal operations and general infra requirements.
Backhoe loader of 50HP is the first and last equipment to enter into an infra site.
But if you look at it from the 75HP class, which so far, was the main segment of backhoe loaders, has now moved to the 50HP after the BSIV emission norms.
When we go to the 90HP, the output is very good. That is almost like an excavator and that is where our 851 comes into application. We have launched 12 compactors with AL engines. We have the highest market share in compactors.
What is your take on Prime Minister’s vision for ‘Make in India ‘?
All these machines are manufactured in India. However, the grader and dozer is a fully imported unit. In terms of market share, we do not look into market share, because some of it is are inter-companies. If you look at it from a revenue perspective, almost 40 percent of the revenue comes from exports. We are exporting to over 75 countries across the globe.
From an end-user’s perspective, what differentiates CASE from other competitors in the industry?
There at two categories of end user. One is a hirer who buys equipment and gives it on hire and earns revenue on an hourly or monthly basis. The other end-user is the one who buys it for captive consumption. Both these end-user have different expectations from the machines. The hirer looks at the least fuel consumption. He is least interested in the output and interested in lowest expenses because while hiring whatever comes in out of that if the expenses are low, means his earnings are more. So the maintenance cost has to be low, fuel consumption has to be low, the machine has to be reliable – so that breakdown cost is low. So, in all the three categories – maintenance cost, breakdown cost and fuel consumption – we are very competitively positioned. I wouldn’t go and give a very strong statement that we are the lowest in terms of maintenance cost and fuel consumption.
Our technology has been built in a manner that it helps to conserve fuel.
If you look at captive use, he doesn’t look at fuel consumption.
Can you give us a brief about your Research & Development Department?
We have a new R&D center which has just been opened at India Technology Centre (ITC) at Gurgaum. It has got over 300 professionals and various streams – hydraulic experts and engine experts who give their expertise across the industry. Indian brain is the best brain and we are using this ITC for not only designing for India, but for others also.
With the increasing prices of steel and other raw materials, what are the challenges you are facing in the sector?
You hit a very wrong nerve. Commodity pricing is killing us. We have been able to absorb some of it because you cannot pass on the entire burden to the consumer. But yes, we are facing stiff challenges. It is not only the commodity prices, but also the logistics costs and the fluctuation in the Forex. We also import our graders and dozers which is killing us. Not only us, it is affecting the industry in a big manner.
Let me add that the industry moved to a different technology – BSIII to BSIV and there was an added cost because of that as well. And the wheeled equipment – the loader backhoe goes to the bottommost class and its buyer is a first time buyer. This buyer has been impacted with 5 – 7 percent of technology cost and then the commodity cost. So it’s a huge jump.
Challenges are there, but we are in an industry where we have to drive and steer through those challenges.
What are your initiatives towards operator training and skilling development?
We have just opened a training center in our plant at Pitampur where we are not only training our technocrats, but also our operators. It is not just training operators for running the machines jobs, but also the maintenance jobs also. We have cut sections of pumps and engines. We have also stated hiring some people from around the village in Indore and getting them into some skill enhancement.
In all our 200 offices across the country, we have started ‘Operator Meet’ where under the pretext of an operator meet, we are calling the operator and training them on the basics. We have started this in a small way and intend to scale this up into a big platform.
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