Piaggio Vehicles, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Italy’s Piaggio Group and India’s leading manufacturer of small commercial vehicles, aims to capture more than 30% market share in a couple of years in India in three-wheelers, banking on its slew of new initiatives.
The intent came with the company’s performance in FY21, where its market share grew to 29% from the previous year’s 23.9%, despite losing volumes by 59%. Now, the company is taking this as a benchmark for its future growth.
Speaking to Mobility Outlook, Diego Graffi, CMD, Piaggio Vehicles said, “We want to continue on our strategy to increase our market share in India to go beyond 30%, banking on the launches and successful transition to BS-VI that we managed to complete in 2020, and increase our presence in that space for both passenger and cargo segments. This is the mission that we have undertaken.”
Last year’s lockdown hasn’t impacted the 3W cargo segment as it is linked to last-mile delivery. “Traditionally, we are leaders in this sector. Secondly, we consciously took the call to prepare for the BS-VI transition before some other players, which gave us a substantial competitive advantage,” he said.
Moreover, all the investment the company made on renewing its product portfolio over the last three years has helped it earn a competitive product edge, enabling it to gain market share, he said.
High potential in ICEs
The company believes that the diesel version of cargo and passenger segments will continue to be predominant in some parts of India. “I definitely see high potential for ICE. We have already started deploying into the field with both petrol and CNG versions,” he said.
The CNG vehicles are a robust and reliable power proposition, giving the customer the possibility to have similar or higher performance than diesel with much better drivability, handling and NVH with a much lower cost of ownership. Therefore, “wherever CNG network is available, I think that this kind of vehicle proposition would be unbeatable in terms of TCO for the final consumer,” he added.
In line with his thoughts, the company recently launched a 300 cc Ape HT range of 3W in petrol and CNG fuel options for the cargo and passenger segments. Piaggio developed the HT engine indigenously to cater to and deliver the high-tech experience of alternate fuel engines to its customers, who need more power and torque from their CNG and petrol products.
“With the launch of this HT range, we aim to further strengthen our position in the alternate fuel segment space,” he said.
With this launch, the company has become the only player to offer a petrol variant in the three-wheeler cargo segment. The petrol cargo 3W offers a substantial acquisition cost-benefit for the price-sensitive customer.
Future outlook
Talking on the two-wheeler segment, Graffi said the company’s mission is to saturate production capacity with the product launches made recently. “In the next two or three years, we will see what other interventions are required in the Vespa brand space and if any other proposition or product launches are required. At the moment, we want to keep on competing in the premium space, maintaining our position in the two brands that we have launched, Vespa and Aprilia. We have about 250 outlets pan India. We plan to reach beyond 400 within the next one and a half to two years,” he added.
On the outlook for Piaggio Vehicles for the next five years, Graffi said the immediate future would depend on further developments in the Coronavirus spread and vaccination campaign drive.
“I optimistically look at the matter. I’m confident that the vaccination campaign, together with the push from the government, will be successful on most of the population by 2021-end. If the consequences of the virus on business can be limited to this calendar year, then by 2022, we can come back to a more normal situation in the industry,” he said.