Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) - the wholly-owned Indian subsidiary of Daimler AG claims 2016 to be a successful year for their business.
Despite a mixed year in its domestic business, DICV exports business more than doubled compared to 2015.
For the current year, the company expects important growth momentum from a new sub-9tonne truck for export and the new-generation of BharatBenz heavy-duty trucks for India.
DICV will start production of this third truck product family in 2017. The new sub-9tonne vehicles will initially be designated only for exports as FUSO brand variants, first customer vehicles will be rolled out in the first half of the year.
Domestic business
In 2016, DICV sold 13,081 BharatBenz trucks (2015: 13,997) in India. This development was due to a challenging market, which had turned negative in the second half of 2016 after a good first half.
At the same time, the 40,000th BharatBenz truck was handed over to the customer, and the BharatBenz network has been expanded to include more than 130 Sales & Service touchpoints at the end of the year.
Exports
DICV’s vehicle exports more than doubled compared to the previous year, crossing the marks of 30 export markets and 7,500 units since the start of exports in 2013.
One highlight in this area was the presentation of the first heavy-duty trucks built by DICV for the Mercedes-Benz brand, which were showcased in November 2016 in advance of their market launch in Indonesia.
Exports of parts from DICV’s extensive Indian supplier base to other Daimler entities around the globe (Japan, Europe, North America and Brazil) also rose steadily and crossed the mark of 35 million parts.
Production milestone
Another important milestone reached in 2016 included production of the 50,000th vehicle at DICV’s manufacturing plant at Oragadam near Chennai, which rolled off the line in August 2016 - roughly four years after the start of production, which marks a ramp-up in the Indian CV industry.
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