Daimler India drives into black for the first time in a calendar year

Well, 2023 was a phenomenal year for us. It was the best year when it came to sales numbers. The domestic medium and heavy commercial vehicle (M&HCV) market grew 10 per cent last year. But, our volumes grew 35 per cent. We have outperformed the market by three-and-a-half times. In the bus segment, the market was quite strong and it recorded growth of 70 per cent compared with 2022. But BharatBenz more than doubled its bus volumes with a growth of 107 per cent, outperforming the market. Overall, we had a growth of 39 per cent in total domestic sales of trucks and buses at 25,435 units. Including exports, we had our best-ever volumes that crossed 33,000 units in 2023. With this substantial growth in sales and exports as well as a 21 per cent rise in parts revenue, our revenue went up 21 per cent in 2023. But we are now a profitable business in India and growing sustainably. DICV reported a net profit for the first time in a calendar year.

Well, we expect 2024 to be a flat year for M&HCV. If you look at the first twomonths of this year, it was 11 per cent lower than in 2023, due to the high base effect and the onset of elections. We believe that this quarter will be like that — 10-11 per cent lower. Normally, the first quarter of a financial year will anyway be slow. This year, we also have the General elections playing out in that quarter. Thus, the first half of 2024 will be slower than 2023, but the volumes will still be higher than 2020 or 2021. If we get a stable government, which we all are very hopeful of, we believe that the second half will be quite strong. So, overall, we believe the year could be a flat year compared with 2023 or slightly lower by up to 5 per cent. The bus market will still continue to grow. We have already seen more than 50 per cent growth in the first two months and we believe the market could end up with 25-30 per cent growth in 2024. We are aspiring to repeat the 2023 show of outpacing industry growth across categories in 2024 too.

Yes, we have already begun the exercise starting with 2023, which was the first year in our second decade in India. There will be two focus areas for us — growth and sustainability. We expect to keep growing in this decade and position ourselves as a formidable CV player in India. So, investments have already started to enable growth. We made some investments in our product portfolio in 2023. This year also, we are continuing to invest in our products and will bring out a whole new range of multi-axle rigids, tractor trailers, and construction vehicles in India. We are also introducing AMT in tractor-trailer and construction product segments. So the investment in enabling growth has already started. 

Yes, we will continue to expand our network. In 2023, we added about 40 touchpoints, taking the total number of touchpoints to 350. In 2024, we would like to add at least 25 touchpoints to increase the number to 375. While we are present across India, there are still some white spots that we have to address. For example, in 2023, we ventured into all States in the eastern region. Now we have partners, who are in the process of setting up the network. We have seen major investments in Uttar Pradesh where our network is not strong.

In the production areas, we are also undertaking some debottlenecking to increase the capacity at our factory. But we don’t require a major investment because the plant itself was set for higher volume. There are different assembly lines and different capacity areas. While the infrastructure has been built for a capacity of 72,000 units a year, the capacity was activated for 36,000 units. As our volumes are reaching close to this capacity, we are adding incremental capacity to support growth.

It is doing quite well. We launched our used truck business during Covid — ‘Exchange’ and ‘Certified’. With Exchange, we have reached a level where 15 per cent of our new sales are now enabled by the exchange. Now, we are working very heavily on the certified business, which means we take back the old BharatBenz, refurbish it, and offer it to the customers with a warranty. So that’s something that we have started to work on since last year and we will slowly build that up. Now we are working with our dealers to open these ‘certified’ outlets. Currently, there are some dealers for certified business in the South and we will slowly expand to pan-India.