VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV) sees heavy-duty trucks as its biggest opportunity to gain market share, as the commercial vehicle maker looks to build on its leadership in light and medium-duty trucks while expanding its presence at both ends of the market.
VECV currently has around 10% share of the heavy-duty truck market, according to S S Gill, Chief Commercial Officer, VECV, giving the company significant headroom compared with its position in light and medium-duty trucks.
“The largest growth area, in any case, logically speaking, would go towards heavy-duty trucks,” Gill told Autocar Professional.
Gill said VECV has been growing faster than the broader commercial vehicle industry. Over the period cited by him, the industry grew around 12%, while VECV recorded growth of 29.9%. He added that the company’s growth during the latest four-month period was upwards of 15%.
VECV is already the market leader in light and medium-duty trucks, a position Gill said it has maintained for the past two years and continues to hold in the current year. In buses, he pegged the company’s overall market share at around 21%.
Within the light and medium-duty bus segment, Gill said VECV’s share ranges from around 25% to 38%, depending on the category.
Heavy-duty Offers Headroom
Heavy-duty trucks, however, offer greater room for incremental market-share gains.
Gill said VECV has been adding share in the segment year after year and is currently at around 10%. With the company already holding a considerably stronger position in light and medium-duty trucks, heavy-duty trucks represent the more obvious area for expansion.
VECV is simultaneously widening its presence at the lower end of the commercial vehicle market through the Eicher Pro X small commercial vehicle range.
The company entered the segment last year and is expanding its presence “state by state, area by area, pocket by pocket”, Gill said.
VECV initially introduced the Pro X with an electric powertrain before adding diesel versions and, more recently, CNG products.
The expansion gives the company another growth avenue in a high-volume segment catering to applications including urban logistics, e-commerce and last-mile transportation.
Pro X Opens Another Growth Front
The small commercial vehicle segment represents an important expansion for VECV as it seeks to broaden its addressable market beyond the categories in which Eicher has traditionally been stronger.
Gill said the company is progressively adding variants and expanding the geographical reach of the Pro X rather than attempting a nationwide scale-up at once.
Increasing vehicle utilisation is also changing the economics of the small-truck market.
Gill cited an Eicher Pro X vehicle that had crossed 100,000km in six months, something he said would once have been unusual even for substantially larger trucks.
He linked higher utilisation partly to improvements in India’s road infrastructure. Trucks that earlier typically covered around 300km a day can today run 600km and, in some applications, as much as 1,000km per day, according to Gill.
The ability to operate vehicles for longer distances and more hours in a day is particularly important in high-utilisation sectors such as e-commerce, where uptime directly affects fleet economics.
Replacement, Construction and e-commerce Support Demand
Gill said the broader Indian commercial vehicle market has been on an upswing, supported by a combination of replacement demand, new fleet additions and growth in individual end-use sectors.
“There is no single answer. There are multiple reasons and there are some sectors which are also growing per se as a demand,” he said.
One of those is e-commerce, which continues to expand and generate demand for commercial vehicles. Gill said growth in the sector has moderated from the 30-40% levels seen during earlier phases but continues at around 16-17%.
Construction is another area where he expects sustained demand for commercial vehicles, given India’s ongoing infrastructure development.
At the same time, a portion of current demand is coming from fleet operators replacing vehicles after extending replacement cycles in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gill said the bus market took around two-and-a-half years after the pandemic for underlying demand to recover meaningfully. Truck operators also deferred replacements in several applications, although fleets operating in high-running sectors such as e-commerce had less flexibility to continue using older vehicles.
Replacement of older vehicles with newer trucks can also improve fleet productivity, Gill said, as modern vehicles are capable of higher utilisation alongside improvements in road infrastructure.
The combination of replacement demand and expansion in sectors such as construction and e-commerce is therefore supporting the broader commercial vehicle market, even as individual segments are being driven by different factors.
For VECV, that demand environment is opening opportunities across the portfolio. While its established light and medium-duty business remains a strong base, Gill sees the greatest market-share headroom in heavy-duty trucks, alongside the company’s push into the small commercial vehicle market with the Pro X range.