FY’18: Tata Motors anticipates 10-15% growth in Sales
Published On Apr 24, 2017
Tata Motors after making a solid performance in the buses segment last fiscal is now expecting more volumes in the current fiscal. The company is majorly expecting the Light Commercial Vehicles and Buses as well as positive GST rate and monsoon for the 10-15% growth in FY'18.
The firm has already launched a separate segment of buses with AMT technology on board. Commenting on the same, Ravi Pisharody, executive director, commercial vehicle business unit, said that last fiscal company led the growth in the LCV segment of the industry by 22% and hopes to continue with the same performance in FY'18 to drive the entire industry volume by 10-15%.
This is a huge expectation as against the 4-6% SIAM predicts for the commercial vehicle segment. Tata Motors recently toppled Ashok Leyland from the top position and became the leading bus brand in India. The company sold 18,198 units in FY'17 in the medium and heavy segment as compared to 14,917 units in previous fiscal, recording a steep 22% growth. On the other hand, AL sales declined by 10% as it sold 17,725 units in FY'17 as against 19,586 units in FY'16.
As per the cumulative sales, Tata Motors registered 5,42,561 units in 2016-17 in comparison to 5,11,705 units in 2015-16, up by 6%. In the medium and heavy bus department, company witnessed 8% growth by selling 47,262 units. Both the giants Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland are now ruling this segment with about 76% of the total market share, out of which Tata Motors is now leading with 40% share. This is the straight 7% increase in the market share as against previous fiscal.
The sheer growth came predominantly from orders of State Transport Undertakings. Over the year, company grabbed whopping 1,500 buses orders from UP, 870 from Rajasthan and 630 units from Andhra Pradesh. When asking about the export, Pisharody refused to put forward source estimates as the sales depends on a lot of external factors. However, the exports in FY'17 improved slightly from 5,142 units to 5,650 units while Leyland’s dropped to 4,877 units from 6,135 units.
Tata Motors has recently launched AMT equipped buses with 23-54 passenger capacity, which will give a new kind of hassle free driving experience. The firm is also planning to launch AMT version of its popular Xenon pick-up trucks which will be exported to Australian market starting this month. He stated that the new range of Xenon pick-ups has been garnering good response in the domestic market recording sales of over 1,000 units so far and company is expecting them to touch the 1,500 mark very soon.
Company claims that both AMT bus and pick-up is first of its kind in the domestic market and plans to launch more such products in future. Pisharody also praised the blockbuster success of Ace pick-up and said these pick-ups will soon get longer bodies version upto 8.2 feet as customer demands pick-ups with larger carrying capacity. Likewise, the new Yodha truck will get double cabin variant shortly. All these will be launched in the next two months.
Elaborating more on the Goods and Service Tax, he said sales are expected to boost from July, following the implementation of the new tax regime, since the new rates are likely to hover around 28% from the current VAT excise duty of 30-32%.
