Driving Novel Ideas to Farms

Escorts Agri Machinery is fast transforming to become a customer-centric ompany, which understands the multiple nuances of the agri business and the iverse needs of the farmers. This new approach of becoming a provider of crop olutions rather than a manufacturer of tractors has found success in the Indian arket. The International Business division of the company is now trying to eplicate the same approach across global markets. Will it succeed?

- Indranil Das and Anupama Polasa

As we stopped by-passers to ask directions to the Escorts Agri Machinery's manufac-turing plant in Faridabad, we were cross questioned by them – which plant? Pertinently so. Escorts Agri Machinery, a part of the Escorts Group, a leading engineering conglomerate, has three plants spread across the industrial cluster of Faridabad. And all of them are enormous in size! But you would probably expect that from a manufacturer of giant 110 HP tractors. Had we not seen the rows of blue and yellow tractors on our approach to Plant 2 of Escorts Agri Machinery, we would have never realised that inside this sprawling green campus, the company has its Tractor Assembly, Transmission and Engine Plant. More of the familiar blue tractors awaited us as we made our way to the office of Rajiv Wahi, Head-International Business, Escorts Agri Machinery (EAM) for a discussion on how EAM is transforming itself from a manufacturer of tractors to a global provider of end-to-end “crop solutions products and services”.

TURNING AROUND

Once India’s blue-chip engineering company, Escorts has over the years exited businesses like motorcycles, telecom and healthcare. It had also lost market share in tractors. But it seems that under the guidance of Nikhil Nanda, Managing Director, Escorts Group, the company is on the verge of a turnaround.