Stalwarts of CE industry honoured at 10th Equipment India Awards
The star-studded 10th BKT Tires Equipment India Awards 2022 celebrated everyone whose construction equipment is at the core of the construction sites. The event, held on October 14, 2022, at ITC Grand Central, Parel, Mumbai, saw the top performers as winners in the respective award categories and rewarded for their remarkable achievements.

This year, apart from the Bestseller product categories and Person of the Year Award, Equipment India [once again] gave away awards in six other important categories like last year.

The programme was inaugurated by lighting the lamp by Pratap Padode, Founder and President, FIRST CONSTRUCTION COUNCIL; Ashok Chhajer, Sr. General Manager - OE Sales, Domestic Market, BKT Tires; Ramesh Palagiri, Managing Director and CEO, Wirtgen India; and VG Sakthikumar, Managing Director, SCHWING Stetter India.

Giving his inaugural address, Padode said, “Equipment India is over 15 years old and today we are celebrating the 10th BKT Tires Equipment India awards. In February 2008, nearly 15 years ago, when we released the first edition of Equipment India, McKinsey report had been released on infrastructure requirements. McKinsey report stated that the Indian infrastructure equipment industry had the potential to grow fivefold from its then-current size of $2.3 billion to approximately $12-13 billion by 2015, growing at 24 per cent CAGR. Obviously, McKinsey was too bullish reflecting the sentiment of the times of 2007-08 when the entire world was galloping in GDP terms. And then Lehman Brothers brought the house down.”

The 10th BKT Tires Equipment India Awards 2022 recognised and rewarded eleven winners in the Bestseller product categories. The winners were Ammann India for Asphalt Finishers; JCB India for Backhoe Loaders; CASE Construction India for Compaction Equipment; BEML for Crawler Dozers; Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery for Mini Excavators and Crawler Excavators; Action Construction Equipment for Mobile Cranes; Doosan Bobcat India for Skid-Steer Loaders; LiuGong India for Wheeled Loaders; and Caterpillar India for Rigid Dump Trucks and Motor Graders.

The winners of the newly constituted categories of Trainer of the Year and Dealer of the Year were L&T Construction and Mining Machinery. Best Innovation awards were given to Komatsu India for their product KOMTRAX, JCB India for LiveLink technology, and Wirtgen India for Soil Stabilizer and Cold Recycler WR 240. JCB India also bagged the CSR Company of the Year award, while Schwing Stetter India won the Green Factory of the Year award for their newly-inaugurated state-of-the-art factory in the outskirts of Chennai.

Sorab Agarwal, Executive Director, Action Construction Equipment, was unanimously chosen by the Jury Panel for the BKT Tires Equipment India Person of the Year 2022 for his remarkable achievements over the years that have propelled both his organisation and the industry. The Jury conferred on the award, considering the company's growth under his able leadership in not only cranes, but also in other equipment categories, and also the overall performance of the company last year.

Agarwal received awards from past winners – Ramesh Palagiri and VG Sakthikumar – the winners of the same award in 2015 and 2020 respectively.

Receiving the Equipment India Person of the Year award, Agarwal thanked the suppliers and dealers for the prestigious award.

The 10th Equipment India Awards was presented by BKT Tires. Timken was the Platinum Sponsor, Gulf Oil was the Gold Sponsor, and Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery and Action Construction Equipment were the Associate Sponsors.

The selection process of the winners was highly transparent; an expert jury panel of the most eminent industry players vetted the findings of Off-Highway Research India, and then signed off on the winners.