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Mr R Seshasayee

Our Bureau

Chennai, Jan. 22 In a sagging market, Ashok Leyland has bagged an order for 875 high-end ultra low entry buses from the Delhi Transport Corporation. The order is valued at Rs 480 crore and, according to the company press release, this is the company’s largest order in value terms from a State transport corporation.

These 35-seater buses will have a floor height of little more than one foot and kneeling facility for easy entry and exit of passengers. The supply of 350 a/c and 525 non-a/c buses will commence from mid-2009.

Ashok Leyland’s Managing Director, Mr R. Seshasayee, said besides delivering these fully-built buses, the company will train key personnel like drivers and mechanics in addition to maintaining the vehicles by setting up exclusive maintenance depots.

The 12-year maintenance contract is valued at Rs 710 crore. Drivers will be trained at the company’s Driver Training Institute, situated at Burari, near New Delhi, which has been set up jointly with the Government of Delhi.

This business comes on top of a Rs 50-crore export order from Honduras. Honduras Armed Forces recently placed an order on the company for the purchase of 139 vehicles valued at $10.5 million (Rs 50 crore). This is the company’s first order from any Latin American company and would be executed by the end of the current financial year. The order is for the supply of a range of vehicles including trucks, tractor-trailers and buses—all left hand drives.

“This order is hard-won since our vehicles have to undergo very extensive and strenuous trials on terrains and in conditions where they have to be employed,” Mr Seshasayee had then said in a company press release. The vehicles are to be used by Honduras in “poverty eradication programmes and other humanitarian purposes.”

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