Tata Motors says CV arm on track for sustained revival

Auto major Tata Motors hopes to build on the ongoing revival of its domestic commercial vehicles having increased its overall market share by 330 bps to 45.6 per cent in August putting the GST and BS-III ban disruptions behind it.
While its passenger vehicles still struggle despite many a new launch, due to regulatory and legal tangles, the company, like the rest of the CV industry, has also been struggling since the beginning of the current fiscal year with the major tailwinds being the note ban in the last quarter of 2016, the BS-III vehicles ban the Supreme Court late March and the GST hiccups in June-July.

"We hope the GST disruptions are behind us and so are the BS-III hiccups if the sales numbers, especially since mid-July through August are any indication. Our sales have been extremely good in August wherein we have increased our total market share by 330 bps to 45.6 per cent. In August our total sales jumped 52 per cent," Girish Wagh, head of commercial vehicles at Tata Motors said here today.
In the first quarter of the fiscal, despite the BS-III ban and the resultant pile of around 15,000 units of unsold inventory, the company saw its sales increasing by 35 per cent over the year ago period, while growth slipped to just 10 per cent in July but zoomed to 52 per cent in August.

Wagh said of these the company has resolved around 35 per cent of the inventory but refused to share details. The company had earlier said it would export as much as possible to Saarc and African markets and the rest would be dismantled for spare parts.
While it increased it market share in the medium & heavy commercial vehicles segment to 53.7 per cent, adding 170 bps, its market share in the ILCV (intermediate and light CVs) rose to 47.6 per cent, an increase of 630 bps Wagh said.

Similarly, in the small commercial vehicles and pick- ups space its market share jumped by 310 bps to 39.7 per cent, in the passenger vehicles space (primarily buses, its market share rose 250 bps to 46.4 per cent, taking the total market share in the CV space to 45.6 per cent which is an increase of 3.3 per cent, he added.

Wagh attributed this to better products, (company has launched a slew of new models and variants since January this year and also to better after-sales service and customer and dealer engagements.
He said since January the company has held more than 1,500 meetings with dealers and other key stakeholders to understand and resolve their problems.
On the customer service front, he said its 15 mobile workshops coupled with over 350 container workshops have gone a great deal to meet customer complaints. Under both these schemes, the company offers within 48 hrs service/repairs or the customer will get compensated.