Volvo-Eicher looks to make most of post-pandemic recovery in bus market

Aims to disrupt intercity segment with fully-built luxury coaches

Two years after Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles (VECV) acquired the bus business from Volvo Buses and merged it with itself, VECV claims to have one of the strongest line-up across the segment from school bus and ambulance to intercity luxury coaches. It is well poised to benefit from the recovery underway in the segment in the post pandemic world, say company officials. VECV acquired the bus business for Rs 100 crore in 2020.

“The integration has resulted in lot of synergies and helped us to leverage the technology from Volvo, strengthen our product line up and made our customers a lot more confident of our capabilities,”  Vinod Aggarwal, Managing Director and CEO, VECV said. The move has helped VECV which till 2020 had its presence confined to the light and medium duty buses to also get into the intercity segment, he added. It competes with Bharat Benz and Ashok Leyland in the heavy duty bus segment.

As the trend of long-distance road travel (up to 600 km) is gaining traction—slowly but steadily after the pandemic, VECV is looking at disrupting the inter-city segment with its fully (factory)-built intercity luxury coaches, said Akash Passey, president, bus business, VECV said.

“We are the only manufacturer to offer fully-built sleeper coaches for the intercity segment. Most others sell the chassis and the body is made by the bus body builders,” said Passey.

Earlier this year in August, at Prawaas 3.0, an annual transport exposition, the bus division of VECV unveiled the next generation Volvo and Eicher intercity buses, including 15-metre and 13.5-metre Volvo 9600 intercity coaches, and the Eicher 13.5-metre intercity coach. The new models are the result of the work the company did during the pandemic, he said.

“The bus industry was the worst hit perhaps because there was no recourse available to the industry. Some support came in the form of three month moratorium but that wasn’t enough. It was the worst phase one would have seen in 20-30 years,” stated Passey.

The numbers reflect the trend. Sales of passenger carriers in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle (M&HCV) that include buses jumped to 7651 units in September from a low base of 1741 units in the comparable period a year ago, according to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam). Similarly, passenger carrier sales in the light commercial vehicle (LCV) have also advanced at a fast clip doubling to 10595 units from 5186 units in the corresponding period.

In the first ten months of the ongoing fiscal, VECV has sold 6,626 light and medium buses against 971 in the same period last year. Sales of heavy-duty buses (12 to 15 meters) have risen to 702 units from 134 units.

Even as the recovery for the overall bus market has been steady, Passey believes for the intercity buses—the market for which has considerably shrunk, the recovery is some distance away.

From 5,000-6,000 units a year pre-pandemic, it is down to 1,000 units so far this financial year. “We will get there in two years,” he said.