Ashok Leyland says retail sales up; expects recovery to continue

Commercial Vehicle (CV) major Ashok Leyland reported an improvement in monthly sales for the six straight month in October. The best performing segments were medium and heavy commercial trucks. Anuj Kathuria, COO, Ashok Leyland spoke to CNBC-TV18 about the trends in commercial vehicle sales.

“Retail sales showed better numbers as compared to September, going forward we expect the month-on-month (MoM) recovery to continue,” he said.

The demand is mainly seen coming from the intermediate commercial vehicles (ICV) trucks and also the tipper segment, he said. “ICV trucks saw good demand, the numbers were up 25 percent for the industry compared to September,” Kathuria mentioned.

Ashok Leyland is seeing a very healthy demand for tippers in north-eastern states. He expects this to continue. “A lot of construction activity is happening, so a lot of transportation of aggregate material, even tippers in the ICV segment especially in the states of the northeast – we are seeing a very healthy demand. We expect some of this to continue,” he said.

Speaking about market share, he said, “There was no major loss but there was a segmental shift that was making the overall picture a little skewed. But definitely with demand coming back in our vehicles, we will be able to recover.”