BharatBenz set to fire on all cylinders

The truck and bus brand from Daimler India Commercial Vehicles recently completed its 10th anniversary. Satyakam Arya, MD & CEO, tells Murali Gopalan that the stage is now set for new challenges in the mobility space and why the company is confident of taking them on.

When Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) recently celebrated its 10th anniversary at its Oragadam plant near Chennai, its employees were literally over the moon. As Satyakam Arya, MD & CEO recalls, it was a "wonderful day" where people felt truly elated.

"The Indian market is not for the fainthearted. Look how we have played this game in coming up with a new brand like Bharat Benz which combines the ideology of Benz with the dimensions of a country like India," he says.

A DICV veteran, Arya adds that this market always figured high in the parent company's scheme of things and it was "indeed a bold move" to invest at that point in time. The world was not in a great place then with the aftermath of the Lehman crisis and a host of automakers were compelled to either shelve or defer investments in India. The list included Peugeot, General Motors, Renault-Nissan etc which had to redraft their strategies in the midst of a global downturn.

Daimler however stuck to its plans for trucks and the BharatBenz brand is now all too well known across the truck and bus ecosystem. This is in sharp contrast to another German brand like MAN Trucks which recently shut down its India operations when it realised that it could not cope with the challenges of this market.

Today, Daimler has split its car and truck businesses globally which means that India will have an even bigger role to play going forward. "With Daimler Truck now a separate entity, we definitely have to prepare for the future of mobility," says Arya. He is pleased that the hard work put in over the last decade has put in place a strong base to take on new challenges.

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