Jk Tyre Corners 24% Commercial Tyre Market Share

JK Tyre, a division of the Hari Shankar Singhania group's flagship JK Industries, has increased its share in the commercial tyre market to 24.5 per cent from April to September 2001.

The company's market share was 22.4 per cent during 2000-01, as per the data available with the Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association (Atma).

JK Tyre is the largest player in the commercial segment of the domestic tyre market. The commercial vehicles segment accounts for almost 70 per cent of the Rs 10,000 crore tyre market in India.

During the six month period, JK Tyre along with Vikrant Tyres, another Hari Shankar Singhania group company, sold 1.05 million tyres. Monthly sales during the period work out to 1,75,006 tyres as against the corresponding figure of 1,58,496 tyres last year. During 1999-2000, monthly sales were at 1,59,772 tyres.

T K Banerjee, director -- marketing, JK Tyre, said: "We recently added four tyres to our portfolio, catering to demands of various niches and load conditions. This continuous innovation and benchmarking customer service standards have helped us to sustain our pace of growth and dominance in the market."

During the period, the O S Kanwar-controlled Apollo Tyres, along with Premieer Tyres, cornered a market share of 22.9 per cent as against 21.2 per cent in 2000-01.

Ceat, an RPG group company, too improved its share from 13.2 per cent to 16.3 per cent during the period.

The sharpest drop during the period was reported by Modi Rubber at 6.4 per cent as against 10.3 per cent in 2000-01. The decline is being attributed to the week financial position of the company. It had curtailed its operations recently.

For the industry, average monthly sales during April-September 2001 was 7,13,539, which is marginally better than the average monthly sales of 7,08,838 during 2000-01.

JK Tyre is also the largest exporter of tyres with a presence in 55 countries. It has tied up with a company in China to source tyres for exports.