Schwing Stetter India: V.G. Sakthikumar, Managing Director

Schwing Stetter India will easily reach its pre-Covid levels in terms of production capacity and sales by August-September 2021, in fact, we have been seeing a consistent rise in the sale of our heavy machinery, even during the pandemic, and are therefore very hopeful of a y-o-y growth of around 20% or more in the near future.

Our IoT-enabled machines were in demand during the lockdown and Schwing Servers for Cloud Data Management were of great help.
Schwing Stetter has always been known for its innovative machines and for leveraging advanced technology like Big Data and Internet of Things in its products and services, which has ensured continued production without the need for physical presence, to a large extent.

During the pandemic lockdown, accessibility to customer sites and equipment had become difficult. However, our technologies enabled our customers to get complete (remote) access to our batching plants and construction equipment and they could monitor their equipment remotely, while our service engineers could troubleshoot remotely from their offices.

We ensured uninterrupted spare parts availability to our customers’ project sites and the Rail Transport helped us when other means of transport had become unavailable. During this period, we also organized webinars for our customers’ personnel to learn basic maintenance and troubleshooting.


Our higher output machines which need lesser manpower for operations are in demand now.
Schwing Stetter equipment are built to last with their highly reliable components, and minimum maintenance requirements. Our machine downtimes are less, and even the rare, critical issues are solved by remote access 24x7. Forward-looking customers, who are knowledgeable about Schwing equipment and their proven performance, have judiciously gone for higher output machines, which need lesser manpower for operations.

Schwing Stetter has been providing factory-refurbished equipment with performance guarantee to its customers.
The pandemic has made all the stakeholders examine the options available to them which will enable them to continue construction of their projects, without having to purchase the desired equipment. Customers are now better prepared to deal with any contingency so that construction activities are hampered minimally.

While renting and leasing have been a part of the CE Industry’s business model to an extent, some other business models are yet to take off in a big way as there would be risks involved to another party in the business chain.


Schwing Stetter India realigned its business and manufacturing processes to help keep employees morale high and enable customers to continue with their production activities, despite the lockdown.
Our strategy is to give the utmost care to our employees so that they can work without apprehension. This approach has led to a fantastic recovery rate of the affected personnel, and without any fatality.

The next big step (a one of its kind in our industry) was that we opened a Covid care center with a complete hospital set-up in our factory premises for our employees and their dependents; this was appreciated a lot by the Government, media, all the stakeholders and, of course, the beneficiaries. We also organized mandatory vaccination camps and distributed medical kits.


By strictly adhering to the lockdown protocol of the concerned authorities, we continued to provide the best possible services to our customers, which helped reduce the downtime of their machines so that their production was not interrupted.

We followed several cost control methods to lessen the burden on the productivity overheads, for the convenience of our customers. We realigned job roles and recast work schedules that were appropriate for the situation; and weeded out redundant activities. Regular communication on the efforts of the company to tide over the situation, to all departments and personnel, with feedback on their performance, led to instant readjustments of several priorities, such that the company continued to function despite all the uncertainties.