Ashley News / June 2008�

ashok LeyLand regisTered a sales turnover of Rs 77,291.23 million during 2007-08 compared to Rs 71,681.76 million in the pre-vious fiscal. With other income of Rs 739.99 million (Rs 708.03 million), total income is at Rs 78,031.22 million (Rs 72,389.79 million). Net profit rose by 6.4% to touch Rs 4,693.10 million (Rs 4,412.86 million).

“Our performance this year can be summarized in two parts”, said R Seshasayee, Managing Director. “In terms of top line, we compensated for the slowdown in the truck market by significantly improving our share of the bus market which registered high growth; international operations, as also the engines and spares businesses contributed hand-somely. Our bottom line was ben-efited by some aggressive value engineering, sourcing initiatives and higher productivity. Despite rising input costs, we improved our operating margin by 60 basis points, to 10.40%”.

During 2007-08, the Compa-ny’s total sales volume reached an all-time high of 83,307 vehicles (83,094 vehicles), a marginal rise despite a shrinkage in the do-mestic market. The Company’s sales volumes were shored up by its good performance in the bus segment which grew 35%. The Company regained its prime position in this segment with a volume growth of 51%.

Exports grew by 21% with sales of 7,285 vehicles (6,025 vehicles). Engines sales were up 37% with additional revenue coming from the newly commenced genset business. Sale of Spares jumped 45%, with revenues touching Rs 7,912 million (Rs. 5,468 mil-lion). In tune with market trends,

At the press conference: (from L to R) K Sridharan, CFO; R Seshasayee, MD; Vinod K Dasari, COO and J N Amrolia, ED-C & AB .

2007-08 Turnover at Rs. 77 billion, up 7.8% Net Profit Rs 4.7 billion, up 6.4%; Capacity to reach 184,000 by 2010

the Fully Built Vehicles sales grew by 25%, to 9,040 numbers.

Seshasayee said that the Com-pany would more than double its current capacity of 84,000 vehi-cles per annum within three years. The Company has earmarked Rs 3,000 crores for capex over the next three years which will enable capacity addition of 100,000 vehi-cles per annum, by 2010.

As part of its product plans, the Company plans to get the Phase One version of the iBus on road this year, post concept valida-tion at the Auto Expo. To address the growing tractor market, the Company is extending its range

of tractors – already the widest. In the current year, 4921 tractor and 3121 multi-axle vehicle are being taken up for full scale production and all-India marketing.

International operations will be boosted, with the chassis and bus assembly plant planned at RAKIA, slated to commence operations this year; capacity is being dou-bled to 2,000 vehicles per annum, in response to market demand from the Gulf region. The introduc-tion of the NEWGEN cab and a range of specially developed truck models will help penetrate some of the current markets and enable entry into a few new ones.

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Fall in goods segment offset by gains in passenger, iCV and exports

Ashley News / June 2008 �

ashok LeyLand won the silver trophy for ‘outstanding export per-formance’ for the year 2005-2006 at the Regional Awards presenta-tion organised by the Engineering

100 ashok LeyLand Falcon buses were inducted into the newly introduced Bus Rapid Tran-sit (BRT) System in Lagos this March. Babatunde Fashola, Ex-ecutive Governor of Lagos State, inaugurated the BRT and went on a commemorative ride on the Falcon (see pic above).

A city bus with seating capacity for 42 passengers and 60 standees,

ThirTy ashok LeyLand semi-low floor buses joined the West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation (WBSTC) in Febru-ary 2008.

WBSTC started its first bus service in 1992. Thereafter, it has been a growth story in terms of public satisfaction, plying in Kolkata and South 24 Parganas. In its pursuit of offering the best of technology to the public, it has introduced GPS in the newly acquired SLF Buses. Of course procured from Ashok Leyland

EEPC awardExport Promotion Council (EEPC) at Pondicherry.

Rapid force in Nigeria

the Falcon was designed and built at Irizar TVS, after a due diligence visit by representatives from Ecobank Nigeria and National Union for Road Transport, accompanied by Ashok Leyland’s dealer personnel.

Now operating 16 hours a day, these buses help ease traffic con-gestion in the most populous city of Africa. And are well maintained by the dealer’s engineers and

Ashok Leyland dealer, Calistus (third from left) with his team. Along with them are A S R Murthy and Roshan Menon from Ashok Leyland.

Semi-low floor buses for WBSTCtelematics services.

Not only buses – WBSTC of-fers ‘Cross Ferry Services’ on the River Ganges. Their goods trans-portation division ‘loaded carriage truck’ operates at Hasnabad, near Bangladesh border.

This government agency has even issued route permits for pri-vate midi and mini bus operators so that the growing demand for public transportation can be ca-tered to.

- With inputs from Mridul K Pegu, DM-Marketing

technicians (trained in India) at a modern bus depot with state-of-the-art facilities, funded by the World Bank and set up by the La-gos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA).

Ashok Leyland is proud to be a participant in BRT - first of its kind in entire sub-Saharan Africa - aimed at providing better comfort to the commuting public.

Antony Lobo, GM-Exports, receives the Award from

N Rangasamy, Chief Minister, Pondicherry.

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Rakesh Jain, RM-East, with Ranjan Dutta of WBSTC.

Ashley News / June 2008�

The hosur ii Unit of Ashok Leyland has received three Safety Awards instituted jointly by Inspectorate of Factories de-partment and National Safety Council. Two first prizes came for ‘highest reduction in frequen-cy rate (reportable accident)’ and ‘longest reportable accident-free period’, while they won a third prize for ’lowest frequency rate (reportable accident) among similar category of industries’.

Hatrick for Hosur II

M Shanavaskhan, AGM-P&A; C Saravanan, Manager-Safety and T N Sriram Kumar, DM-Safety receive the awards from Anbarasan, Welfare Minister of Tamilnadu.

XLRI award for MD r seshasayee, Md, received the prestigious Sir Jehangir Ghandy Medal for Industrial and Social Peace from XLRI, Jamshedpur.

The Sir Jehangir Ghandy Medal was instituted by XLRI in 1966 and previ-ous recipients of the Medal include illustrious names from diverse fields including J R D Tata, Arvind Mafatlal, Holck-Larsen, Jyoti Basu, J N Godrej, Brijmohan Lall Munjal, M S Banga and K V Kamath.

“Best metric submissions”

Two design ProjeCTs sub-mitted by the Engine R&D team at Parametric Technology Corpo-ration India User Meet 2008 were

declared ‘Best Metric Submis-sions’ winning the first prize for Ashok Leyland. The two projects were:

• ‘H’ series 6ETI BSII Engine 3D model developed through ‘Top Down Design Approach’, submitted by Rohit Gupta

• Weight optimized intake mani-fold, submitted Vijayanand The Engine R & D team had

submitted 16 Metric entries. Ma-jor participants at the event were TATA Motors, Eicher Motors, Kir-loskar Oil Engines, L&T, John Deere and ARAI.

The Ashok Leyland winning entries featured in the PTC Annual calendar

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Calling for supplier partners in growth‘ConTinuuM’ (a transition from one condition to a different condi-tion without any abrupt changes or discontinuities) was the theme of the two-day Supplier Summit held this May. The theme reflected the Supplier Performance Manage-ment (SPM) process launched last year that would result in a transformation of the supply base of Ashok Leyland over the next two to three years.

Speaking on the occasion, R Seshasayee, MD, thanked the suppliers for their support in the past and invited them to be part of a “mutually rewarding growth journey”. Dr Sumantran, Execu-tive Vice Chairman - Hinduja Au-tomotives Limited, highlighted the growth aspirations of the Hinduja Group to achieve significant pres-ence / leadership in multiple sec-tors and geographies. He sought suppliers’ support to form a col-laborative enterprise to achieve these objectives.

Vinod Dasari, COO, spelt out the Company’s expectations from

suppliers in terms of quantum improvements in Quality, Cost, Logistics, Development and Management (QCLDM) and the changes pursued at Ashok Ley-land on these fronts as support measures. “There is a greater need to work closer, faster and smarter based on mutual trust and transparency”, he summed up.

R R G Menon, ED-Product De-velopment, stressed the need for an active and early involvement of suppliers in the Product Develop-ment process. Anup Bhat, ED–Strategic Sourcing, highlighted

the SPM portal enhancements. He also explained the rationale and criteria of rewarding perform-ance of suppliers and thanked the efforts of all suppliers towards QCLDM performance improve-ments.

320 representatives from 170 firms attended the Summit. Awards were given away to high performance suppliers mapped through SPM process. Results of an on-line supplier feedback survey reflected Ashok Leyland’s readiness to capture, introspect and act upon suppliers’ feed-back.

Infrastructure development - the focus at Dealers’ Meet

The indian CoMMerCiaL ve-hicle market is getting crowded with practically all global players already on the scene. This brings into play international technology as well as global processes and practices. Even as Ashok Leyland is investing in global technology and embracing global practices, in tandem, its marketing infrastruc-ture has to match growing custom-er expectations in terms of spread (reach) and standards (service) for a uniform customer experience and satisfaction. These were the

points stressed at the annual deal-ers’ meet held this May.

The Balanced Score Card (BSC) awards - based on param-eters that include sales, service and parts - for 2007-2008 were given away. 142 dealer outlets were evaluated through BSC; 61 outlets qualified for awards/incen-tive; 2 qualified for Platinum, 24 for Gold and 35 for Silver clubs.

The Kadappa outlet of Au-tomotive Manufacturers Private Limited (AMPL) was adjudged the ‘National Best’ outlet.

The AMPL team receives the ‘National Best’ outlet award. (From L to R) R Parameswaran, DGM-Network Planning; Sachin Sanghvi, ED-AMPL, Maharashtra; Rajive Saharia, ED-Marketing; Vinod K Dasari, COO; R N Rao, SD-Sales and Service; Bharat M Sanghvi, CMD-AMPL; V M Hombali, SD-Customer Care; Rajiv Sanghvi, ED-AMPL Andhra Pradesh; Pradeep R Kamdar, ED-AMPL Gujarat and B V Reddy, AMPL Andhra Pradesh.

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“There is a greater need to work closer, faster and smarter based on mutual trust and transparency”

Ashley News / June 2008 8