Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), which sells BharatBenz brand of trucks and buses in India, is likely to end the current calendar year with overall truck sales close to 2019 levels, supported by the strong recovery in the commercial vehicle market in the country.

With a 29 per cent rise in its truck sales (above 9-tonne) to 3,640 units during the September 2021 quarter, the company’s total truck sales for the January–September period stood at 10,408 units, higher than 2020 volumes of 9,624 units.

Improving demand

The company clocked volumes of 3,528 units in the December 2020 quarter and with improving demand scenario in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle (CV) segment, the company may clock higher volumes this quarter as compared to a year-ago period. As a result, the company’s total truck sales for 2021 are expected to touch close to 2019 volumes of 14,474 units. Its strong sales year was 2018 when the company clocked 22,530 units.

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“CV industry volumes are expected to improve, aided by healthy freight availability, better freight rates and pickup in construction activity. Channel checks indicate that volumes are aided by Tippers, ICVs and some replacement demand for MAVs,” said auto-analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services.

In the past two quarters, CV sales have improved substantially by 65 per cent y-o-y, and grew 25 per cent y-o-y in the September quarter, mainly due to a lower base. However, demand recovery will continue in line with recovery in overall economic activity, improving fleet utilisation levels, and a higher number of road construction projects.

Recovering segment

In a recent interaction with BusinessLine , Satyakam Arya, Managing Director & CEO of Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), said the recovery in the CV segment has been impressive and with the current sales momentum, the M&HCV industry may end 2021 with total volume close to 2 lakh units, though it would still below the pre-Covid size of the industry.

DICV’s market share (in above 9-tonne segment) stood at close to 8 per cent during January–September 2021, down marginally from 9.1 per cent in the same period in 2020, according to the data provided by Daimler AG, DICV’s parent company.

Fill portfolio gaps

As the CV industry enters the next growth cycle, DICV will be rolling out new products to fill some gaps in its product portfolio and to take advantage of demand revival.

Also see: Commercial vehicle industry entering next growth cycle: Satyakam Arya of DICV

It will also ramp up its dealer network to support the emerging growth curve.

“We had announced that we will reach 350 touch points by 2022 and we are on track to achieve that. We have added 8 new touch points this year. When we started the year, we had about 250 touch points and we may end 2021 with 270 touch points,” said Arya.

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