Amid strong competition, mainly from Chinese players, construction equipment major Tata Hitachi is working towards further increasing its market share in India.

A joint venture between Tata Motors and Hitachi Construction Machinery Company of Japan, Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery Company is the market leader in the excavators segment of India’s construction equipment market. Currently, it garners around 24 per cent market share in terms of volume.

 “We are always working for increasing the market share up to 26-27 per cent (in excavators segment). But many manufacturers have come up. Today major competition is coming from the Chinese manufacturers. They have very low-cost products with no standardisation on pricing,” Tata Hitachi Managing Director Sandeep Singh told mediapersons here. 

The company’s market share in the excavators segment was at around 30 per cent about five years ago.

Singh said the Indian government is required to look at cheap Chinese imports of construction equipment and product quality to contain it.

“We need to look at some kind of quality standards. The customs duty should be re-looked at. It needs to be ensured that they (Chinese players) do not undercut. The government should look at what prices it is coming and what prices it is sold at. CCI (Competition Commission of India) has to look at it,” he said.

Presently, the market size of construction equipment is around 1.25 lakh units in the country. 

Products in pipeline

The company has two manufacturing plants – at West Bengal’s Kharagpur and Karnataka’s Dharwad. The Kharagpur facility is the largest excavators manufacturing plant in Southeast Asia.

“We are celebrating 40 years of Tata-Hitachi partnership. We are very well placed to cater to the excavators market in India,” the MD said, adding around 90 per cent of the company’s sales comes from the excavators segment.

In the last financial year, the company posted around ₹5,000 crore of turnover. It hopes to clock around ₹7,000-7,500 crore turnover in the next three years.

The company is focussing on mini excavators and mining trucks. Smaller trucks will be produced at Kharagpur. It is also aiming at increasing the level of localised components across its products to contain production costs.

“Currently, around 65 per cent of components are localised. We are looking to increase it to around 70 per cent in the next two to three years. This will help us stay at the forefront of innovation and increase Atamnirbharta. Atmanirbharta has been part of our culture from day one,” Singh added.

Tata Hitachi is planning to invest around ₹200 crore in its two manufacturing plants this fiscal.

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