Kobelco Construction Equipment India has focussed on two aspects at bauma CONEXPO INDIA this year: Attachments which is a special application and its newly launched 52-tonne mining machine SK520. Also on display at the Kobelco stall was its demolition machine, which the company sees to be the business of the future. Vikram Sharma, Advisor (India & South Asia) and Ex-Managing Director, shares morea One pathbreaking offering: Being amongst the world's leaders in excavators, constant innovation and improvement is a necessity as well as a habit with Kobelco.

Having achieved the position of being the leaders in fuel average and also high productivity in India, we have now offered products with further improvement on these factors. In large machines particularly, the productivity achievement through combination of mechatronics, electronics etc would be a major achievement.

Demand drivers in 2019: Currently, it is road construction. With the growth in the roads segment, we are seeing a 20-30 per cent growth. Next to roads would be coal mining.

Announcement contributing to the company's growth in 2018: While we could not keep pace with the growth because of our production capacity limitation, we have still grown well in 2018. We have started our third phase of factory expansion program and would try to meet the demand from our existing and new customers, which till now has been constrained.

The increase in production would maintain our growth which we have been achieving constantly since our inception since 2007.

Challenge for the company in 2019: For Kobelco, the increase of production is the major challenge for which we already have started work at Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. Our challenge is to finish this project in time and start rolling out the new models introduced, in larger numbers.

Key strategy to success in 2019: To now make our new strategies a reality is our focus v such as mining, attachment applications, etc. We would be expanding our markets by these offerings on special machines. Hence the strategy would be to grow the numbers of the existing line of product, as well as expand through newer applications with the new offerings.

Recommendation for the construction equipment market growth: We request the government to keep the programmes going and to resolve issues like that of land acquisition, etc, and let things move.