Eicher to double market share in Sri Lanka

Monday, 30 March 2015 01:05 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Inshira Shainaz In a bid to double the commercial vehicle market share in Sri Lanka Senok invests $ 1.5 million to expand its showrooms and facilities, a senior official said. “Currently our market share is around 5% and we expect to double up to 10% this year. Hence, we are going to establish new showrooms and facilities in strategically identified locations such as Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Kandy,” Senok Trade Combine General Manager Kumar Mendis told Daily FT. VECV Lanka together with Senok launched the Eicher pro series of light and medium duty trucks and buses in Colombo last week.

Sri Lanka’s light commercial vehicle market is mainly dominated by Indian truck makers and their brand presence in the country has been quite strong for some time. He said that they expect to sell 500 units of newly launched Eicher pro series of light and medium duty trucks and buses by the end of this year. The newly launched Eicher Pro 1000 Series, a completely new generation range of medium duty trucks will be sold at a price of Rs. 2 million to Rs. 3 million and the Eicher Pro 3000 Series with the car-like features with driver coaching and VOLVO 3M high power price range will be 15% to 20% above the Eicher Pro 1000 Series. The Eicher Pro Series trucks and buses will meet the need of the emerging mid premium market sector which demands vehicles of high power, durability, greater comfort and value added enhanced features at economical cost. VECV Vice President Emmanuel Levacher stated, “We want to push our brand and products in Sri Lanka. Mainly, we want to grow in the heavy duty bus segment. It is specially designed to tap the heavy duty bus segments in the country and we have great expectation to increase our market share with it. We will continue the light duty buses and heavy duty trucks, but we want to start strongly in the heavy duty bus.” During the last two years, Eicher grew five times from 1% to 5% in Sri Lanka. In certain segments they have doubled up in the market share with a heavy duty market share of 11% and light and medium duty buses market share of 17%. VEVC globally in the export market has exported 6,000; to be accurate – 5,824 trucks and buses over 27 countries. The company growth the last five years across the globe is 25,000 trucks and buses; which have doubled – now there are 50,000 but the last few years the Indian industry has been under pressure so there are around 40,000 buses and trucks; that is the company growth – it is more than the industry growth. Pix by Daminda Harsha Perera