What are the milestones achieved by your company under your leadership?
Indian market offers both unique opportunities as well as challenges for manufacturers like us. We see opportunities for market growth as infrastructure spending increases, market evolves and matures. However, the challenge in such an environment remains in developing or adapting products and manufacturing capabilities that suit the specific demands of Indian market. Innovation in products and manufacturing practises remain a key in overcoming these challenges. We have continuously invested in our local manufacturing facility and engineering centre, in developing these innovative products and manufacturing capabilities in our endeavour to meet these challenges. We have now achieved an important milestone of becoming the largest producer of reduction gearboxes in India, which is a testimony to the veracity of our belief and commitment to the Indian growth story.
Tell us about the recently launched products and their winning technological features that will suit the Indian construction scenario.
Over the years, Bonfiglioli has been investing in new technologies, one of these has been electro mobility. We have developed a range of products hosting these winning technological features, for the new age electric applications in construction industry. Some of the products that have been lined up for this show include.
Bonfiglioli 700CE, planetary track drives coupled with a high-power density electric motor are specifically designed for high-voltage hybrid powertrain systems. An integrated, maintenance-free IPM (internal permanent magnet) electric motor is included, giving significant benefits in terms of dimensions and efficiency.
Bonfiglioli high-efficiency, low-noise planetary axles and drives with integrated high-performance electric motors and low maintenance braking systems for tow tractors and other such applications.
Bonfiglioli 600WE planetary wheel drives incorporate an integrated, maintenance-free electric motor and offer significant benefits, including compact dimensions, low noise and high efficiency. 600 Series drives are designed for use with all kinds of aerial platforms and other types of mobile machinery, for indoor and outdoor use
Quality and pricing – how will you balance this equation to cater to a price-sensitive market?
Our products lie at the heart of construction equipment’s, their performance is critical to the overall performance of the equipment. Being a leader in our field of business, we set benchmarks for performance, thus quality is an uncompromising facet of our business. However, price competitiveness in the price–sensitive Indian market can’t be ignored, and we address it by working together with our customers. This would involve in depth study of duty cycles for right sizing of products, understanding machine features for product optimisation and continuous improvements by way of VAVE projects. Our local engineering centre works closely with our customers to achieve these objectives.
Your viewpoint on the market demand dynamics. How do you foresee future for the equipment manufacturers?
Even though equipment industry has been growing substantially in the past decade, we believe given the infrastructure requirements of India, market is still in the early growth phase. This major driver coupled with the fact of low equipment density that prevails in infrastructure projects in India, makes the growth inevitable. However, the growth won’t be secular across the various equipment classes. As the market matures, we are likely to see a shift in the demand from low productivity equipment’s to high productivity equipment’s. We are well placed to take advantage of this shift in demand dynamics, with a product range suited for these, high productivity equipment.
What are the problems that are proving as stumbling blocks for the growth of this sector? What should be done to give a boost to this sector?
Even though we have witnessed a substantial growth in the Indian Construction Equipment sector, one of its key characteristics has been the cyclical nature of the demand. This makes it notoriously difficult to predict, which has implications for attracting fresh investments in this sector. A policy certainty in infrastructure sector, could go a long way in removing stumbling blocks in its growth. These, along with government initiatives, encouraging local manufacturing of construction equipment and aggregates both for domestic use and exports, will provide the necessary boost to this sector.
As far as your company is concerned, how well equipped are you to make deeper inroads into the market? Are you planning to scale up the manufacturing capacity?
Our business philosophy always has been to partner with OEM who are leaders in their business and develop tailor made, highly customized power transmission solutions catering to their requirements. Over past two decades of our presence in India, we have worked closely with all the major OEM’s in the industry, to develop an unmatched range of products that have become bench mark in the industry. Continuing with approach, we intend to extend our leadership position by making inroads into new markets. We have scaled up our manufacturing capacity by developing a new facility adjacent to the existing facility. This is housing modern assembly lines, R&D Centre and test labs, that will help us in this endeavour.