Talking to: Eric Leblanc, managing director, Volvo India

Volvo India's stand at the Expo showcased its different businesses in India, not just buses.

What are you displaying at the Expo and what are your plans for the Indian market?

Our customers associate us quite strongly with buses right now. But we want to showcase that we have a lot of different businesses in India, including trucks, buses, and construction equipment. In fact, we sell more trucks and construction equipment than we do buses.

But we have amongst all the Volvo businesses, the same values – quality, safety and environmental care and we’re leaders in transport efficiency and technology. We have products that already meet Euro 4 and Euro 5 emission norms much ahead of their implementation and we also have hybrids. These are our answer to the problems of pollution and global warming that is the big challenge of our time. We also want to show that there are alternatives to CNG and that diesel engine technology has evolved to offer a better solution than CNG.

Have you shown any specific new products at the show? No, we have no new products here. But we have launched new truck models in 2007 and announced the opening of our new bus body building plant at the end of January. The frames for these buses will be made of imported galvanized steel. As for the body the top panels are again galvanised steel and bottom ones are aluminium. So they are entirely rust- proof and will give much longer service life.

How do you see the market developing in 2008?

We are very upbeat about the market and we see growth in commercial vehicles. A lot of things have already happened for us in 2007. On construction equipment, we bought Ingersoll Rand’s business which means we got another plant in Bangalore. We will be re-branding their products as Volvo. Of course on the truck side there is the joint venture with Eicher. This will allow us to enter new segments of the truck market. We will enter the higher volume segment with their range of trucks. They are of course also developing their next generation of trucks. We will use their platforms to lower the cost of Volvo Group truck brands.

We are also looking at our acquisition of Nissan Diesel in Japan as a potential platform that we can use in India. These are heavy duty trucks which could be positioned between Volvo and Eicher. So these things will give us a platform for very high growth in the future and will make us a major player in India just as we are in the rest of the world.