Ashok Leyland to deploy employees from operations to sales temporarily

Hinduja Group flagship commercial vehicle manufacturer Ashok Leyland Ltd has initiated projects including deputing employees from its manufacturing plant to work in the frontline sales, for a short period, to reduce the working capital in the difficult market environment.

The company has already taken about 50 people from manufacturing plant to work in sales with the existing sales team and plans are to deploy more employees from the plants to sales, said Vinod Dasari, managing director, Ashok Leyland Ltd.

Speaking to the reporters in the sidelines of the 8th SAEINdia International Mobility Conference and first Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress organised by Society of Automotive Engineers India, Dasari said, "In our industry it is not that somebody will go to the showroom and buy. You have to explain the value proposition to the customer and who can do it better than those people who are Ashok Leyland blue blooded people? It is not a permanent move. We have said that it would be for six to nine months".

"Already 50 people have gone into sales and another 50 will go this month. We are hoping that 200-300 employees like this will go and work in the frontline sales, along with the sales team. These people are mostly from operations - it could be from plant, planning, sourcing etc.," he said. "We have several projects going on, which is to reduce our fixed cost," he added.

It may be noted that the company has announced a Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) exclusively for executives in the month of November. By the end of November, around 500 executives have applied for the scheme, which helped the company to save 10% of the cost of executives. The company is not looking at a similar size of VRS in future.

The government's decision to fund 10,000 odd buses under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) scheme was a good move, but the process has been delayued and no tenders have come out for the 6,000 buses sanctioned initially.

While the company was expecting to supply around 1,000 buses under the scheme this year, as the process is taking long period, it might not get a chance to supply the buses for the scheme this year, he said. The company makes around 25,000 buses a year and Jnnurm might give it order to the size of 4,000-5,000 buses a year.

Speaking in the inaugural function in the conference, he said that the challenge for industry is to be innovative to develop an affordable and value-adding solution that can perform well in these circumstances.

Although Indian automotive industry has picked up speed with a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of over 12% in patents filing, India at less than 0.1 patents per 1,00,000 employees is far lower in the pecking order compared to some economies such as Japan at 21 , Germany at 16, or Korea at 10.

He added that the electronics in Commercial Vehicle will play a significant role in improving safety, fuel efficiency, and reducing pollution. The “smart” connected vehicle will integrate, analyse, and transmit information using several convergence technologies.