ECE's Different Strokes….

In a free-wheeling discussion with S.A.Faridi, General Manager-Marketing Mr. Rajinder Raina outlined that ECE's important initiative at hand is to emerge as a vital player in construction equipment market by retaining its strong position in Backhoe Loader space with plans to strengthening its position further through JV or on its own. Apart from these, he says, "We are planning to expand our horizon by entering into new application areas with certain new products. Moreover, special emphasis is being given on making the distribution network wider, robust and responsive. Last but not the least, we are also in talks with Comansa to set up a manufacturing base in India to cut the production cost to benefit our customers. These initiatives will differentiate Escorts from the competition and help us to double our turnover in the next two years." Excerpts:

Overview-CE Market and Escorts Biz
The equipment market is still down. It will take another couple of years to pick up and reach to its 2011 level. For us, no doubt that the number of the equipment sold in the market remains the same but the proportionate share of the type of equipment has changed and that is where the profitability gets affected. We are happy with the performance, where all the other companies are struggling to create some space in the pie, as we are still getting business. Backhoe loader will surely do the job for us in future. Compactors are also picking up in the rural areas and that the government associated projects are on the up.

We are working on some new products/models to get in to new areas/applications. Besides, we will soon launch a couple of new cranes. Lately, we have worked upon the city crane, because we know that a lot of work has to come up in towns & cities. So we are focusing on maneuverability of these equipment as well to ease and speed the operations especially in the congested areas. Fast & easy travel between one site to another will give acceptability to this crane with retail hirers. Other than that, we are into the process of adding a few new products in the existing range like truck cranes and tower cranes.


With all these initiatives, we are looking forward to double our turnover in the next two years.

Localization for Cost Cutting
We are open to new strategic partnerships on the manufacturing as well as trading front to increase the bandwidth of Escorts product offerings. We have the capability to localize the equipment to meet the specific needs of the Indian construction industry. We already are in talks with Comansa which is known the world over for its highly innovative and reliable tower cranes manufacturing, to set up a manufacturing base in India and bring the production cost down thereby reducing the prices for our customers in local market. ECE in BHL Space We are doing fairly well against our competitors in Backhoe loader (BHL) Space. Escorts Backhoe Loader, Digmax II has been registering growth consistently by garnering increasing market share. At a time when all the competitors including the market leader have been posting negative growth, it gives us the confidence that Escorts has the right product & after support to help us achieve our targets. Importance of Third Party Certification Yeah, we believe that Third Party Certification should be there because the customers have the right to know the efficiency of a particular equipment. We all know that no machine is good for all types of works and therefore the efficiency should clearly be mentioned according to specific functions the machines are made to perform. Robust Dealer Network Any company needs to have the required setup ready to support its new or existing products range in the market and that includes a fully equipped sales & after sales team and the other required basics. Escorts has a blueprint in place to put up a robust sales & service apparatus in place. We would make sure to rope in dealers in most of our sales activities. This helps boost the confidence of the channel partners in the company and thereby in the market. Six months down when the industry picks up, we will have our dealers in place. Last year, we had only 36 dealers with 75 outlets. Currently, we have 140 outlets across the country and are fairly aggressive on this front as we have a dedicated setup to look after the market expansion through dealers.