 "Ashok Leyland to launch 3 products to cash on festival season")
To cash on the upcoming festival season, the commercial vehicle major Ashok Leyland is planning to launch three products, of which two are from its Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) portfolio and a bus.
Speaking to reporters at Chennai today V Sumantran, vice chairman, Ashok Leyland said that normally any new products will create enthusiasm in time like this (slowdown in the industry) and will even push volumes, so we decided to bring out new products to customers.
The company plans to launch Dost Express, a 13-seater passenger vehicle by October-end, followed by Dost Ambulance by November-end and a six tonne LCV Partner and a 27-seater Partner Bus a passenger vehicle in January 2014.
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"We are sure these products will create excitement among customers and will help in our sales,” said Sumantran.
It may be noted, Ashok Leyland joined hands with Japanese auto major Nissan to launch LCV products in Indian markets. The first product came out from the JV was Dost, under Ashok Leyland brand, and the company sold around 55,000 units of Dost since its launch in 2011. Then Nissan launched a product, followed by Ashok Leyland STILE.
To a question on how this festival season is likely to be for the industry and for the company, Sumantran said, "we are not sure how the season likely to be, as the recent Onam festival was not healthy festival this year. However, as the monsoon was good and farmers' are happy about the expected yields things are looking up. It remained to be seen in the next quarter”, he added.
Sumantran said, the company don't believe on discounting, incentives or any kind of subvention to offset the slowdown in the LCV segment, which the competition does, as claimed by the company.
He noted, the LCV market dropped by around 12 % during the current fiscal. The LCV segment started coming down from April.
Ashok Leyland LCV segment dropped by 16.85% in September 2013 as compared to same period last this year.
gWe hopes to end the current fiscal with a flat growth over last year's total sales of 37,000 units in the LCV segment”, said Sumantran.
The company bets big on the new Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV) Stile which was launched few days back. The company hopes to sell around 500 to 1,000 units, said Nitin Seth, executive director (LCV & defence), Ashok Leyland. The main USP for the product is mileage and total cost of ownership.
He said, compare to the competition product, Stile is nearly Rs 3 lakh less than the competitor and its extensive network of 125 customer points is another advantage, he said.