AMW had earlier planned to launch the vehicle during last fiscal.
"We are ready with the product, but we have decided to focus on our trucks business for the moment. We are waiting for the right time to launch the vehicle," said Anirudh Bhuwalka, managing director of AMW. He explained further that the luxury bus market in India is in a very nascent stage at present and is roughly estimated to be less than 1,000 units per annum.
"It is a very small market dominated by multinational players like Volvo and Mercedes. This segment is not a priority for us at the moment. We will launch the product as and when we see there is an opportunity," Bhuwalka added. When launched, AMW's buses would be priced competitively vis-a-vis its foreign counterparts and they would be manufactured at the company's Bhuj plant in Gujarat.
The company had earlier planned to launch luxury buses during last fiscal, but however, decided to hold the plan and instead focus on consolidating its presence in the truck segment. AMW has launched 10 models of trucks last year and is now working on expanding its footprint through dealerships. The company has rolled out haulage trucks in the range of 25-31 tonnes last year. While the segment has seen a 20-22 per cent drop during 2012-13, it is still a large segment estimated to be around 150,000 trucks per annum.
AMW too saw its sales fall from around 9,000 trucks in 2011-12 to around 6,500 trucks during 2012-13.
The company mainly operates in the off-the-highway trucks segment, vehicles that are primarily used in mining, construction and road building activities. It enjoys a 19 per cent market share in the construction and mining segment, Bhuwalka said.
Hit by the hard times, the truck-maker had also decided to shelve its plan to enter the light commercial vehicle segment earlier.
"We have shelved the plan to foray into the LCV segment as the market is crowded with many players in the segment. We have instead decided to focus on our core strength, the HCV segment," said A Rama Subramanian, president, AMW had told Business Standard sometime back.
Meanwhile, the company expects the market growth to continue to remain muted. "We do not see any immediate respite, however, things might look up in the second half of the fiscal. On the whole, we are expecting better growth than previous year," Bhuwalka said. The company had clocked a turnover close to Rs 1500 crore last fiscal. It plans to launch some new variants in its already existing range, but no new platform launch is planned during the year.
The company currently has an installed capacity of 50,000 vehicles per annum, and also exports trucks to countries like Nepal and Bhutan. Bhuwalka said it would soon start exporting to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and in African and West Asian countries.