How BharatBenz leveraging digital technologies to stay ahead

Published On Mar 05, 2020By Trucksdekho Editorial Team

BharatBenz is eyeing leadership in the Indian trucking industry, and the company is increasingly leveraging digital technologies to reduce the cost of its trucks, bring efficiencies in the organization and offer a better value proposition to its customers by enabling them to make more money.

Daimler India Commercial Vehicle (DICV)- the parent company of BharatBenz Trucks is following a clear roadmap to improve the experience of its customers and make the internal processes much more efficient than they are today. And it is not just the traditional methods to do this but also trying to benefits from emerging digital technologies. Such digital strategies also helped the company bring down the cost considerably and stay profitable even in the most challenging market conditions. Taking further steps, the company is introducing critical tools for the successful implementation of its digital blueprint. Last year BharatBenz launched new digital services with Proserv app.

“We believe digital technologies are the real game-changer in the future. Our approach to digitization is 360 degrees and if digitization is done in the right way, it will enable us to achieve higher efficiency across the company and for our customers as well”, says Satayakam Arya, MD &CEO Daimler India Commercial Vehicles.

Pro-active sensing

The company is launching pro-active sensing shortly; this tool will help to detect vehicle failure at an early stage and predict failures before any breakdown, thus assisting a customer with the solutions without letting the vehicle standing on the road or at the workshop. This will avoid any disruption in the business cycle of customers and the loss of crucial vehicle time during transportation. The company is offering various connectivity solutions with its BSVI trucks and will be leverage in providing this tool, which essentially is preventive care of trucks.

TruckConnect

Another tool coming shortly is-TruckConnect- which is a tracking and diagnostics system built into BharatBenz trucks. This will be made available to the customers 24x7 to essentially dispel the various apprehensions the fleet-owner usually grappled with, such as driver performance, fuel safety, traffic rules, among other concerns. TruckConnect will allow the customer to monitor the truck real-time, thus helping them to bring down the fleet operation cost and make the truck more efficient. The company is offering various features in the first phase of TruckConnect, which will be launched shortly.

Digitization of Vehicle Lifecycle:

The digitization of the vehicle lifecycle is basically offering the customers multiple things both at the dealerships and also at the OEMs level directly. The customer can book service, order spare parts, seek roadside assistance, among other things with the help of an App. The company claims this is done for the first time in the Indian CV industry. DICV is confident that this App will not only make the trucks more efficient but highly customer-oriented. DICV already offers Digital Technical Information Platform, an after-sales central (ASCENT) touch-enabled, animated multilingual single interface system at its workshops across India. This system provides details about the functioning of every aggregate used in a BharatBenz truck. This is to ensure that the service technicians always have ready access to the necessary information and can rectify issues accurately.

BharatBenz BSVI strategy

DICV is also working on several areas to make the BSVI transition smooth to its customers, also despite the higher acquisition cost of BSVI truck, it is helping the customer to bring the total cost of ownership down and earn more profit. Elaborating the company BSVI strategy, Arya talked about five key pillars towards successfully rolling out the trucks and help the customer to earn more from each vehicle.

Fuel efficiency: The company is promising up 10% better fuel efficiency in BSVI trucks, the most single important cost aspect for the truck owner.

Safety and comfort: While BharatBenz trucks are already the safest in the industry, the BSVI trucks are getting 10 additional features making the trucks even safer and comfortable to run and operate.

Higher reliability: The BSVI trucks are tested for more than 15 lakh km under Indian duty cycles. This makes the company confident to offer up to 8 years of warranty and up to 10 years of AMCs. Again, a first of its kind extended warranty in the Indian CV industry.

Maintenance cost: BharatBenz is offering up to 6% lower maintenance cost on its BSVI trucks as compared to the BSIV trucks, thus helping its customers to earn more.

Connected Vehicles: The company will roll-out state-of-the-art connected solutions with BSVI trucks, which the company believes will be a real game-changer with a state-of-the-art This will be further enhanced in next 2 years to create a clear differentiator among truck makers.

BharatBenz promises more to its customers to offset the increasing cost of the BSVI trucks. However, the initial cost of the truck is just 10% of the total cost of the life cycle of a truck. The company working on the other 90% of the cost of a truck owner by ensuring it goes down considerably to enable him to earn more profits. BharatBenz claims that the break-even for BSVI truck is earlier than a BSIV truck which the company says a real game-changer to its customers.

BharatBenz already started selling BSVI trucks in the market where the BSVI fuel is made available such as NCR. The new BSVI trucks have so far covered more than 25,000 km on Indian roads and proven the cost of ownership equation to customers. To leverage India's capabilities, DICV is also trying to enter new business areas such as defence or off-highway segments. The company will use its culture of innovation to find new business ideas and revenue areas in the near future. The company is eyeing the freight aggregation space to enable an opportunity because DICV believes it is a fast-growing segment with big enabler to penetrate the market.