1. With the industry starting to feel a shift in thought from upfront cost to total cost of ownership of a vehicle – how will this change the game play for premium players?

The customers have started to recognize the need for improving fleet efficiency & driver productivity as critical. This shift will make them value the OEM offerings in totality which will move the competitiveness to parameters like driver comfort, TAT, Driver information system, etc. Having said this the Indian end-user is unlikely to pay higher freight so its left to OEMs to offer superior features without increasing cost of ownership significantly. So premium players will have to offer features at a cost which justifies the impact to an operators bottomline.

2. With the brand lines (product ranges) going deeper and deeper to satisfy the differing needs of consumers, how does this impact the business model from a cost perspective?

OEMs need to offer affordable yet feature packed vehicles. Customisation will win. At the same time standardization across platforms will help lower cost apart from overall volume.

3. How is digital impacting the commercial vehicle industry? Is there an uber like disruption waiting to happen in CV industry? How will it impact the CV players?

Digitisation is in and have started drawing newer competition lines. There are freight aggregators & e-commerce companies who are setting new benchmarks in logistics. With the Government also encouraging e-tolling, GST implementation, scrappage policy, etc this helps operators who can leverage with disruptive business models.

Operators will manage their fleets better using real-time data to plan better & reduce costs. Access to real-time data like tyre pressure, fuel consumption and wear will enable preventive maintenance and hence more uptime. Remote diagnosis and solutions will further help quality & speed of repairs.

Overall, this will have a positive impact on the CV industry and we will see shifts happening amongst GVW categories.

Join us at India’s leading Commercial Vehicle platform: Commercial Vehicle Forum 2016 (http://cvforum.in/) on 24th November 2016 at The Westin - Chennai where more of such trends will be discussed by leading brands & experts.