Even as the threat of Chinese imports looms large, Apollo Tyres has chalked out aggressive plans to achieve leadership position across commercial vehicle, passenger vehicle and tractor categories by 2020, supported by strong investments in R & D and branding.

“Our vision 2020 is to build leadership in terms of brand, technology and people. While we are refraining from giving any number for revenue or market share targets, we have plans to increase our gains across categories as also achieve pole positions,” Sathish Sharma, President – Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, said on the eve of launching company’s new radial tyres for trucks and buses here.

With 27 per cent market share in the CV space (replacement segment), the company hopes to have a third of the market.

“We would like to dominate the CV space and we think that we have a game plan which will take us to 32-33 per cent market share. This means that we can grow faster than the market and we can snatch share away from other people,” he added.

To support this plan, it is doubling the truck and bus radial tyre capacity of 6,000 units a day in the next 24 months. It will come out products to appeal to changing customer needs in the CV space. It has just rolled out three new products for this segment.

In the PV space, the company has gained a lot of experience not only in India, but in Europe with its OEM success story. “We have perhaps the largest capacity for passenger car radial tyres in the country. We are also the largest exporter of these tyres. We continue to build our brand with the latest being its association with Manchester United Football Club,” Sharma stated.

Apollo Tyres expects growing farm mechanisation to offer huge opportunity to establish the Vredestein brand, which has a legacy of 100 years for tractor tyres in Europe. With the Apollo and Vredestein brands, the company has a strong portfolio to target this segment.

Sharma pointed out that the imports from China continued to grow and were causing huge damage to the domestic industry. Chinese tyre imports grew by 70 per cent in 2015-16 and this fiscal they have grown by 40 per cent. “If there is no level playing field, Chinese imports will jeopardise the domestic industry," he added.

Box: mulls launch of radial 2W tyre

Sharma said the company was contemplating launching radial two-wheeler tyres

in the next 14-16 months. It will be based on the company’s technology and may be produced at the Baroda unit.

The company entered the two wheeler tyre segment during March.

The company is reported to be selling about a lakh two-wheeler tyres a month and is hopeful of increasing it to 2-2.5 lakh units by the end of this fiscal.

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