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To strengthen its presence in the intermediate commercial vehicle (ICV) segment Ashok Leyland Limited (ALL) today launched “BOSS”. The company hopes that the product would help company's sales which has been dropping over many quarters now.
Speaking on the sidelines after launching the new product today at Chennai today Vinod K Dasari, managing director, Ashok Leyland said that the new product will help the company to partially tide over the decline in sales, thanks to first of its kind features in the product.
It may be noted, the company reported a 22% drop in its April-September sales to 44,841 units as compared to 57,324 units sold in the same period last year.
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Boss launched in 9.6 tonne, 12 tonne and 13 tonne variants and soon 8 tonnes and 16 tonnes will follow and the products comes in two variants - LE and LX.
Dasari noted, the ICV market is estimated to be around 50,000 units a year or 25% of the total CV industry and has been growing at around 20%.
"We increased our market share in this segment from four% few years ago to 11% and with Boss this will improve further," Dasari said.
He also added the company also decided to follow 'no discount policy’ on BOSS. It may be noted, the company also said it will follow the same Policy for the Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV).
To a question on whether, the company will be able to say no discounts when it comes to M&HCV, Dasari said, “we have to follow the market, especially the leader. We had increased the vehicle prices due to increase in material costs and it is the price increase that is not being recovered from the customers. The discount on bigger vehicles is around Rs 1.50 lakh per vehicle,” he said.
Ashok Leyland will also export Boss to the US, Europe and Middle East with local specifications. The company started a trial with SAARC countries, including Sri Lanka and Nepal. On the capacity to make Boss in its Pantnagar facility, Dasari said, the present capacity is to produce 100 units of Boss a day.
