Volvo Construction Equipment is focussed on bringing the organisation increasingly closer to its clients and leveraging its business accordingly. Well-positioned with its product range to be successful in this country, the company had several new launches at the expo that are completely engineered in India. Dimitrov Krishnan, Vice-President, Volvo Construction Equipment India, shares more on the company?s plans with SHRIYAL SETHUMADHAVAN.

On the expo: Exhibitions are places where you meet potential suppliers, the general public, operator communities, owners, managers in owning companies, competitors, etc. The response and footfall has been good. Many existing big and new clients have visited us.

Focus on R&D: It always starts with identification of the customer?s needs. The sales and marketing team puts together the requirement, based on which new products are developed. It?s a cross-functional team between the sales organisation, the engineers who develop these products and the people who actually create systems and processes to support these products.

After-sales service: The reason we are successful is after-sales service. We have customers associated with us for 15 consecutive years. Our key to success is that we can always make a first sale by impressing the person with the product quality, brochure, salesmanship, etc. Plus, the experience of the product over a period of time truly keeps them with you. We invest a lot of money in developing strong capability and making it a strong competitive advantage.

Current market sentiments: The market is strong, especially the road construction and mining segments. We have seen good improvements in sectors like iron-ore mining, which were low over the years. Also, road construction is driving close to 70 per cent of demand, with which large-volume products such as excavators, compactors and motor graders have been growing at more than 40-45 per cent. This is expected to continue for the next two years.

Products for roads: We offer a wide product range for the roads segment. If you look at our excavator range, the EC140D, EC210D, EC250D and EC300D, many of these serve the roads segment in excavation building as well as in quarries that feed material to the road. Then, we have soil compactors for compaction of the material, pavers to put the materials on top of the road before they get compacted again by a soil compactor or asphalt compactor if it is a bituminous material. So we have products to finish the road from start to end. Then, we have a pneumatic tyre roller that finishes the road to give a nice surface. So, we are well-positioned to capture the roads segment and are doing well there.

Future growth: We will largely focus on improving our geographic presence across the country. We have a strong distribution network with 15 dealers operating across more than 120 different locations. So, our focus will be to improve our distribution and ensure all our products are well-recognised by the customer.