Tata Motors, the country’s top commercial vehicle firm, is planning a slew of new launches in small and big truck segments in order to regain its market share in the next one year.

The company is looking to regain its market share of about 60 per cent in the 16-tonne-and-above truck segment that it lost a few quarters ago.

“We believe there is an opportunity to get back our market share in the above-16 tonne segment. We have about 54-55 per cent share now. Today, we are missing 2-3 products in 37- and 49-tonne categories. We will be launching new products before December to fill those gaps,” Ravi Pisharody, Executive Director, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors told recently.

The company is looking to roll out products such as 37-tonne pusher axle and tag axle trucks.

With a service centre every 50 km, Tata Motors is confident of reaching 60 per cent share in 12 months. Meanwhile, the company is also looking to strengthen its small commercial vehicle Ace family.

While there could be a variant in the Super Ace segment, there will also be at least two new variants of the Ace Mega, priced close to ₹4 lakh, before December.

“The new Ace Mega variants will come with higher payload capacity and will help improve the productivity of the operator,” said Pisharody.

Tata Motors sees the slowdown in demand over the past three months as temporary phenomena and expects the M&HCV market to still grow by at least 10 per cent.

“We have not seen any dramatic change in macro economic factors for slowdown. Also, replacement demand doesn’t wane overnight. It is a too shorter cycle to get a major correction. We need to wait till October,” said Pisharody.

While there is uncertainty related to the implementation of GST and its likely impact on vehicle prices among the truckers, Tata Motors expects good demand post monsoon, continued replacement demand in fleet expansion and certain amount of pre-buying for BS IV adoption, to drive volumes.

In the bus segment, the company is aiming 20 per cent growth this year due to pick in demand both STU (State Transport Undertaking) and private carrier segments. “This will be one of our best years for buses,” he added.

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