Commercial vehicle major Ashok Leyland has announced its financial result for the first quarter of fiscal 2021. The company reported revenue of Rs 651 crore for Q1 FY2021 (-88.54%) as against Rs 5,684 crore for the same period last year, and a loss after tax of Rs 389 crore (-269%), compared to a profit of Rs 230 crore a year ago.

The company says the results was owing to the lock down on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. With virtually no operations or revenues in the first part of this quarter due to the lockdown, the demand is seen to be gradually opening up as the situation is being eased.

During the quarter Ashok Leyland introduced its AVTR range of modular vehicles in the HCV segment as also a completely differentiated ICV range of vehicles. The company says its BS VI Mid-Nox technology provides superior fluid efficiency, which have been well received by customers.

Vipin Sondhi, MD and CEO, Ashok Leyland said, “With the pandemic hitting us, this has been one of the most challenging quarters for the industry. We saw a significant decline in volumes, consequently, Ashok Leyland also saw a reduction in volume, affecting the financial performance of the company adversely. Despite the challenging times we went ahead and launched the unique modular business platform AVTR, which gives our customers the flexibility to choose vehicles as per their requirements. This will be a game changer in the industry and we have already rolled out over 2,000 of these vehicles till date this year and together with our LCV range we have already rolled out 10,000 BS VI vehicles. This is indeed a very encouraging sign for the quarters to follow.”

Gopal Mahadevan, whole time director and CFO, Ashok Leyland said, “This is an exceptional quarter not just for the industry but also for the entire economy. We have used this time to drive disruptive cost efficiencies and productivity measures. The focus was also on maintaining liquidity, not just of the company but also our dealers and vendors. There have been tremendous learnings for us in doing business efficiently without dropping the ball on growth initiatives. We will come out of this much stronger.”

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