An interview with Mr. Wilfried Theissen, Managing Director, Putzmeister India
What are the milestones achieved by your company under your leadership?
In my nearly 8 years as Managing Director of Putzmeister India, the company has been on a continuous growth path. Our initial focus was on concrete pumps only. Based on our customer requirements and demands we have, over the past 4-5 years, introduced a wide range of additional equipment including Batching Plants, Transit Mixers, Plastering and Screeding machines, Shotcreting pumps especially designed for tunneling and mining applications, and High-Density Solids Pumps. Over the years, Putzmeister has gained market leadership in the concrete pumps. We have expanded our footprint beyond India and we regularly sell products in Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Africa, SE Asia, Japan and South America.
Tell us about the recently launched products and their winning technological features.
Putzmeister has always been leveraging technology in its offering to our customers. Our R&D team works continously both on customer requirements and increasing the efficiency of our equipment. Infact, Putzmeister technology is one of the 3 main drivers why customers invest in Putzmeister solutions. As is our practice, we prefer to keep new developments under wraps till the actual event.
Quality and pricing – how will you balance this equation to cater to a price-sensitive market?
While India is still a largely price driven market, we have witnessed a substantial change over the last 5 – 7 years. Customers have gradually moved from buying an equipment as cheap as possible to finish the project, to buying a product which is not only the best to finish the job in the most cost effective and timely manner, but which also has the highest after sales value and service and application support during the project phase.
Your viewpoint on the market demand dynamics.
The CE industry has indeed seen a downturn in 2019. That said, Putzmeister has been able to retain its position as a leading supplier of concrete pumps.
India continues to be an important market for the Putzmeister Group. The country has ambitious infrastructure and development targets, and we are positive that these will come to fruition in the short to medium term.
What are the problems that are proving as stumbling blocks for the growth of this sector?
We believe the government needs to help the sector through regular mobilization of funds and timely payments. While financing has eased up a bit, customers continue to face challenges. This has a knock on effect that hurts the entire industry.
As far as your company is concerned, how well equipped are you to make deeper inroads into the market?
We recently announced that Putzmeister and Sany concrete sales and service team have joined forces to offer our customers One Face, Two Brands. We believe this approach will improve our product portfolio, service and after sales capability for our customers and hence help us gain market share. We have been steadily scaling up our manufacturing capacity over the past few years and will continue to invest to meet customer demands and requirements.