Around 100 dealers of Hero Electric on Friday brought their protest in front of the company’s Managing Director Naveen Munjal’s residence in South Delhi, demanding an immediate payment of the dues.
The dealers have been also demanding immediate supply of the spare parts of the vehicles sold to them so that they can service existing customers and also sell those vehicles which came without chargers and batteries.
“We are representing a total of around 600 dealers across India who are suffering for the last many months. The company has been giving us wrong promises that they will start the process in two months, but after every two months, there’s nothing,” a Delhi-based dealer told businessline.
According to him each dealer has a minimum pending amount of at least ₹50-70 lakh and in case of bigger dealers, those amount runs into crores.
The dealers have been protesting for the last three days at the headquarters of Hero Electric in Gurugram and they also written to the President, Prime Minister, Niti Aayog, Finance Minister and the Minister of MSME against the company, alleging that the it has failed to provide vehicles and the warranties for spare parts, resulting in around ₹100-crore worth of warranties still pending with the company.
The dealers are demanding dues of around ₹500 crore from Hero Electric and according to them this negligence has also left around 50,000 customers in vain.
However, Hero Electric has denied this claim and said “claims of ₹500 crore pending towards dealers was made, which is patently false and mischievous”.
“Dealers have separate agreements with the company, based on their sales estimates. Production shutdown for the last nine months has caused delays; however, the company has already started production, and dispatch of vehicles has already commenced with a commitment to the dealers to resolve open issues by December 2024,” a spokesperson at Hero Electric had told businessline.