Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) has witnessed appreciable growth in its exports, though domestic sales numbers are nothing to write home about. Even in the exports, the parts business is better than the fully-built vehicles.
DICV, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler AG, Germany and operating under the umbrella of Daimler Trucks Asia, began making medium and heavy-duty trucks for export back in 2013 and has cumulatively exported about 35,000 trucks and over 3,000 buses so far.
However, it saw appreciable growth in exports of parts. Between October 2020 and May 2021, the cumulative number of parts exported has increased by more than 17%. In fact, the company has been witnessing more than double-digit percentage growth in parts exports, ever since it began in 2017. These initiatives have validated DICV as a preferred destination for sourcing by other Daimler entities.
Speaking to Mobility Outlook, Satyakam Arya, Managing Director & CEO, DICV said the company has been manufacturing four Daimler brands at its plant, including BharatBenz, Freightliner, Mercedes-Benz and Mitsubishi Fuso. While BharatBenz is for India, Nepal and Bhutan, the Freightliner goes as far as Mexico. Mercedes Benz is exported to Indonesia, and Mitsubishi Fuso brand of trucks is shipped to more than 40 markets.
“Right now, we are exporting to many countries in Asia, except China and Japan, because of emission norms. We are shipping to almost all the countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America,” he said.
Talking about export of parts, Arya said, “We have cumulatively exported about 175 million parts (until October 2020, the figure was 150 million parts). We have a consolidation centre inside our plant. We work with about 100 of our suppliers, who send their parts to us, and we ship them to different plants of Daimler.”
DICV has emerged as the global hub for medium-duty transmission for Daimler. “We even localise intricate systems such as transmission by transferring our knowledge to our suppliers,” he said.
New opportunities
The parts exports business has been growing well for DICV, and according to Arya, this is happening because the company is looking at what more can be sourced out of India at any point in time. “We have continuous engagements happening with local suppliers, comparing prices, and looking at whether it’s more cost-competitive to buy from India. We develop those parts and start supplying them to our consolidation centres. It is an on-going process,” he said.
Asked if there are opportunities beyond parts exports, Arya said there are many projects in the pipeline. “Beyond the components, aggregates and vehicles, we are exporting services. This is where India also does a great job with IT companies,” he said.
Last November, DICV inaugurated its Global Capability Centre (GCC) in Chennai. It is designed to house the company’s ‘shared services’ business stream that refers to the various services DICV exports to other Daimler entities worldwide, including R&D, IT, cost engineering, supplier and quality management, human resources and customer service.
Since the launch of its service export business in 2012, DICV has already delivered end-to-end solutions to more than 10 countries.
When GCC began its operations last year, there were 165 people. “We have commenced recruiting engineers, and we have about 200 of them on board already. We are providing the services to Europe, Japan and the US. We will continue to expand this business, focusing on R&D, design, customer service and documentation. There are many things that we believe the engineering talent of India can do. And the competence exists in India,” Arya concluded.