Interview with Prasan Firodia

Coming back to your business, when will the Gurkha be launched across the country?

As we announced in July this year, we will launch the Gurkha next month in September 2014. Therefore we thought of the RFC in August. If we win the RFC there will be nothing like it. We have in the meantime learned a lot in terms of motorsports, which is completely a different ball game. The way you think of engineering on a regular basis you cannot think like that here. It’s completely different.

The engineering team that worked on this, for them it was exciting because they were doing something which is very different. There was no bar on how wide you can go. A lot of team work was displayed in putting these vehicles together in two and a half months. Every department, right from purchasing to development to testing to prototyping, I think they loved it.

For the other employees who were not a part of it, it would be a proud moment for them also?

 Absolutely, I am waiting to get these vehicles back into the factory and show them what the guys have done and made.

Are you going to remain a niche player in the passenger vehicle segment in India?

I have learnt a lot in the last two years. Getting into the personal vehicle segment is not easy and is very challenging. Indians want a change every six months. One needs to have big pockets and the ability to sustain losses. The good thing is though we have sold close to about 3000 SUVs we have learned a lot. . We got to learn about new features, new technologies, new safety requirements – ABS, air suspension, electronics, Infotainment all of these are features which are today not very predominant in CVs. Getting in to a segment like this helps you a lot. But whether I do this big scale, we will have to look at it carefully.

But our existing business, be it the Traveller  or the Trax, it’s doing extremely well. In the Traveler segment we are now clearly India’s largest van maker. The Traveler is doing extremely well. We have extended our Traveler platform and those segments are going phenomenally for us. Our Traxs segment continues to do well. Gurkha is again a niche product and the beauty of a vehicle like a Gurkha is that it’s an ageless product. People are going to respect it for its off roading capability so vehicles like this will survive a long time. You look at the Land Rover Defender. It hasn’t changed. Look at the G class Gelandewagen, the body remains the same for the last 40 years.

For the Gurkha, there is no offering similar to this. This is huge potential in exports. For the last two months I have been exporting vehicles. Several countries in Africa have taken the Gurkha as an army vehicle. Several African game parks have taken our vehicle as an excursion vehicle.

How is your business with Mercedes progressing?

We started in 1997, we have now done close to 50,000 engines. After a few years we added axles. The portfolio increased from engines to axles. Now I am doing C, E, S, M, GL and soon I will be doing the CLA and the GLA in terms of engines and axles.  The business has only grown. We have a very good relationship with Daimler.  Hundred percent of all Mercedes cars built in India which are CKD have engines and axles going from us. Similarly, based on our performance and consistency, we won a contract with BMW. We have a dedicated plant coming up in Chennai. This plant will be live in January 2015. All engines for BMW, right from the X1, X3, X5 to the Q 3,5,7 and the Mini vehicle, all ranges will be going from us. We will be the only company globally who will be supplying engines to both BMW and Mercedes-Benz. In case of BMW it is even more unique because this is the first time in the BMW universe where somebody else is going to assemble and test their engines. This does not happen anywhere today. We are putting in around Rs 100 crore in the plant,  BMW is putting in around Rs 200 crore. We got the contract in March 2014.

Traditionally for the last 35 years we have been assembling and locally building Mercedes engines for our own use. We are exposed to German engineering too some extent. We have been doing work for Mercedes since 1997. The way we have performed, our business has only increased with Daimler. That’s a big achievement.  BMW also respects this. They too need reliable partners. As for the capacity, whatever BMW makes, 100pc of that will be built at the plant.

Assuming the Gurkha wins the RFC 2014, will it have a positive impact overall on your company and its products?

Definitely, if the Gurkha wins the RFC, it will have a huge positive rub off not just on the company brand but also on other products. I see it as a very positive thing for us. Events like this get people together. I always wanted to show what a Gurkha could do. I was waiting for a right platform. I wanted to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the OEMs and their events. If we say we are an off-roader then competition too has an off-roader. What is the big differentiator? I knew of Rain Forest Challenge and it is treated as a real hard core off-roading. If you qualify and do something in the RFC then you definitely have something. So I thought this would be a great platform to showcase what a Gurkha can really do. If we win this year and we hope we really do, we will go next year to Malaysia. There will be a huge learning for us. Look at Formula One. Learnings from F1 comes into regular cars. Technology on braking gets evolved in F1. The technology on aerodynamics comes in from F1 to a great extent.  Off-roading of this nature will help us further improve our products, going forward.

The interview was conducted on the first day of the RFC 2014