After losing its position to Honda as the third-largest producer of two-wheelers in India, TVS Motor Company on Wednesday said that it would rationalise its two-wheeler platform into a common one to reduce the number of parts intake level to 40% to cut costs and increase quality.
The company would also introduce a product every quarter to regain lost market share, said Venu Srinivasan, chairman and managing director, TVS Motor Company here. The company currently has multiple platforms for different products.
Speaking at the company's AGM here, he said: "We have lost some market share to Honda as the latter has gone aggressive with marketing and presence post liberation from the Hero joint venture. We will increase our presence through number of products and we have plans to launch a product every quarter apart from commonalising our production platform to reduce parts intake sharply. One would see at least three motorcycles in the next 15 months to take on the competition."
The 125 CC Phoenix will be launched soon, he added.
Srinivasan said be it TVS or any other company the margins are expected to be under pressure given the current downtrend in the two-wheeler industry, at least for sometime from now. “Being in the fourth position, TVS tend to feel such heat for sometime till we go aggressively with newer products over the next few months.”
“Building brands is very important for us. We have built strong brands such as XL Super, Scooty, Star City and Apache. While some of them have not done well due to various reasons, we continue to create such brand equity for our products. TVS would definitely have more such brands over the next few years to strengthen our position in the two-wheeler market,” Srinivasan said.
Nod for Venu's son as VP
TVS Motor on Wednesday received shareholders' approval on the appointment of Sudarshan Venu, son Venu Srinivasan, as vice-president, effective December 1, 2011. In September 2011, he was appointed as additional director of Sundaram-Clayton Limited (SCL), the holding company of TVS Motor and is currently a director at SCL.
