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Indian farmers will now have an option to work on their fields from the comforts of an air-conditioned cabin in their tractors. Mahindra and Mahindra's (M&M) farm equipment sector is all set to offer an air-conditioned variant for their newly launched Arjun Novo tractor.
The company, which launched the tractor here today in the Gujarat market, said that the air-conditioned variant would be available from February-March onwards. "The new Arjun Novo is designed keeping in mind the needs of high-tech farming in all Indian states. It offers many unique features that are the farmers' dream," said Ravindra Shahane, vice president, maketing, farm equipment sector, M&M.
The development of this 57 HP tractor has taken around five years and an investment of around Rs 300 crore on the new platform. Vijay Sharma, vice president, sales, farm division, M&M said that the Arjun Novo has been developed through extensive research and insight conducted with over 100 farmers across India." The new Arjun Novo, as M&M claims, can do over 40 farming applications.
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One of the key draws of the tractor, however, is the air-conditioning option. Sharma said that during their research, this demand actually came up from farmers. "Farmers have become aspirational, and would desire more comfort during their seven to eight hours of hard toil on the field," Shahane explained.
He added that so far no other organised player has offered an air-conditioning option in its tractors that are under 80HP.
"M&M too has AC tractors in the 80HP range, but we export those. Even foreign players have developed AC tractors in the 80 HP range, but none have so far brought them to India," he said. M&M itself would also export the Arjun Novo, however, finer details were yet to be worked out.
While the Arjun Novo has been priced around Rs 7.45 lakh (57 HP) and Rs 7.25 lakh (52HP), the company did not disclose the possible pricing of the the air-conditioned variant.
The above 48 HP tractors segment has been growing steadily over the last few years, from a 4 per cent share of the overall tractor market in FY05 to around 16 per cent of the market in FY14. The overall tractors market size is around 650,000 units a year.
