Putting the CV and Road Transport Industry under spotlight

The premium CV conference held in Pune brought together 400+ senior level executives from 200+ brands as attendees, 60 industry experts as speakers and over 35 partners.

Commercial Vehicle Forum is India’s premium C Level Commercial Vehicle & Road Transport Event. Its 6th edition brought together all senior professionals from the CV industry under one roof. It took place on June 9, 2022 in person at the JW Marriott Hotel in Pune. The event welcomed 400+ senior level executives from 200+ brands as attendees, 60 industry experts as speakers and over 35 partners. After a 2 year hiatus, CVF came back to its pre-pandemic glory with its premium content and excellent on ground execution for the 6th Physical Edition.

Like the previous editions, CVF had again taken a dual approach this year also, first offering a broad narrative on the trends & developments in the commercial vehicle industry being discussed in the CXO panel then using a selection of topics running in parallel to explore in more detail about the future opportunities. After the CXO Panel session, CVF had two conference tracks running parallely to provide greater depth, particularly on Future Trends and EV & Alternative Fuels. Participants attended the track that they found most suitable to their interest area.

CVF has become the crossroads for senior level professionals from CV Manufacturers, Auto Suppliers, Associations, CV Dealers and the Government, alongside some of the worlds’ most disruptive Logistics Service Providers over the past 6 years.

The 6th edition included a series of insightful keynote addresses, research presentations and panel discussions. Jinal Shah, Managing Director at Expandus Consulting opened proceedings with an inaugural presentation on the Indian CV & Road Transport Industry. He talked about how the past, present and future of the industry looks like and  where we stand as an industry? He said: “Our industry was on a cruise control mode since 2017 but then came the transition from BS4 to BS6 and GST implementation, the benefits of which we are seeing in the economy.” He added that COVID-19 led to demand issues, shorter turnaround time for trucks but on the other hand it also helped us reset belief in the industry front, accelerated traditionalization & localisation and gave rise to new opportunities.

Satyakam Arya, Managing Director & CEO, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles chaired the conference. He started his Keynote Address by thanking the CVF team who brought together the CV industry in these unprecedented and challenging times. He said “The CV industry has weathered many storms over the years and currently, this has made everyone stronger and more resilient.” He saluted all the players in the industry starting from OEM’s, component suppliers, fleet owners and drivers for their passion and perseverance over the past 2 years of the pandemic. He added one thing that everyone missed was to meet in person and exchange ideas and the CVF Theme “Great Indian CV Safari” captured this in the right spirit and brought like minded experts together. Mr. Arya said Industry today is at the cusp, mobility as we know over the years is going through a fundamental change from the drawing board to reality. His presentation led emphasis on recounting where it all started, from the first truck in the world being designed by Gottlieb Daimler in 1896 to the first truck being launched in India in the year 1954 by Daimler Benz. A lot has changed since then and the industry has gone through changes in unprecedented times. 2020 was a tough year due to the pandemic where sales dropped by 50% to half a million units and companies bore losses due to lockdowns and unlocks. Gradually things started getting better, and in the last year the market recovered annually with close to 7,00,000 units yet remaining below the level achieved in 2018.

After the chairman’s address, the conference’s CXO Panel of experts, debated on the top trends in the CV & Road Transport Industry and how industry outlook shall be in the near to long term. The moderator for the session, Jinal Shah, Managing Director Expandus Consulting set the tone of the session and discussed how we are looking at reducing high crude oil bills and at the same time higher cost of certain components and raw materials, coupled with rapid technological advancements and at the same time managing pressure of maintaining if not reducing the cost of ownership from customers.

Since the main topic of discussion was on mega trends and disruptions, Jinal asked as to how the industry is looking at cleaner and zero emission technologies. He started with Ms. Anjali Pandey, Vice President, Engine and Components Business, Cummins Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. asking her if she sees the end of diesel anytime soon? She answered this by saying: “For diesel we see a longish transition, because there is enormous work happening in the diesel space and as Jinal referred to in his presentation emissions are here to stay. Diesel alternatives are not that easy and the adoption of these technologies should be economical for the end user.”

A few other topics the panellists discussed included building a sustainable future, technological disruption & challenges such as tapering down of overall economic growth.

After this the room was divided and the conference had 2 tracks running parallely to provide greater depth, particularly on Future Trends and EV & Alternative Fuels. Participants attended the track that they found most suitable to their interest area.

After deliberating the top trends in the CV and Road Transport Industry the topic of discussion moved to Safety in the first presentation of the day by Shivkumar Balasubramanian, Director- India Sales, Netradyne Technologies Pvt Ltd, who spoke about “Driver & Fleet Safety in CV fleet.” He spoke about how his company is leveraging data generated specific to Indian market conditions to help the fleet manager, safety manager, and driver of the company get better by using real time data of the driving habits.

ADAS Technology, Telematics, Connectivity & More

After the presentation, the moderator for the first panel discussion of the day, Ashim Sharma – Partner & Group Head Business Performance Improvement Consulting, Nomura Research Institute set the tone by asking what is happening in the ADAS Technology, Telematics, Connectivity space? What must happen to increase adoption? Are there any challenges or roadblocks? And where do we see worldwide adoption happen as we move forward?

He kicked off the discussion by asking for an OEM perspective on what have been the results so far for the customers who have adopted Telematics and ADAS solutions, to which Aniruddha Kulkarni, Vice President and Head CV Engineering, Engineering Research Centre (CV,EV, Fuel Cell, Defence) Tata Motors responded: “All these technologies need to be seen from a customer angle and not just a regulation perspective.” We need to see how telematics and ADAS will refine in-vehicle experience.

Gopi Sankar M, Vice President & Chief Engineer- Advanced Vehicle Program, Ashok Leyland added: “ADAS is seen as something outside the vehicle, telematics is seen as something inside the vehicle and connectivity is for connecting these things. The main focus going forward should be generating more value to these systems and providing insurance and safety.”

Electric CV Revolution

In the other room, a parallel panel discussion took place that spoke about Electrification of Commercial Vehicles. The moderator for the session, Hemal Thakkar, Director Transport, Logistics & Mobility, CRISIL Ltd. started by stating how the industry is recovering post pandemic and initiatives taken by the government in the form of introducing FAME, PMP etc.

He asked Vani Mehra, AVP Sales & Mobility, Euler Motors as to how she is seeing the E-cargo space and how her company is growing, what are the challenges they have been facing and how are they seeing this trend of electrification playing going forward? To which she replied “We have seen a tremendous amount of improvements in the education of industry and in customers. Rising fuel prices cannot be missed and the end customer is a daily wage earner, these rising prices have pushed him to think about new fuel alternatives available in the industry.” thereby fuelling growth of the industry in general and company in particular.

After discussing electrification in the E-cargo space, Hemal moved to the topic of electrification of buses. Polash Das, Head eMobility (New Initiatives), CESL spoke about how they are the new members in this ecosystem and yet have created some disruptions from the government point of view. There was a lot of money with the government under FAME in the form of subsidy but it wasn’t getting utilised. The idea is to bring in more and more electric buses and to make certain financial models that will be viable for STU’s to adopt as well and to roll out 50,000 buses in the next 5 years.

The panel also discussed how e-rickshaws have proliferated into the rural parts of the country where basic forms of public transport are not there. So, the potential is going to be huge on the cargo side and the passenger side as well in the coming years.

The above panel discussions were then followed by a presentation on “Future of Commercial Vehicle Engine Braking Technology” by Vinod Ajankar, Head India Business Development, Jacob Vehicle Systems and a presentation on “GREEN MOBILITY – The case for Renewable Energy to drive India’s Auto Industry.” by Jaykumar Waghela – Region Head (North & West)- Business Development, Fourth Partner Energy.

 Sourcing and Supply Chain

Post lunch, the panel discussion on Rising Commodity prices, Supply chain constraints and building cost efficiencies took place. The panel discussion deliberated over how in the last 2 years pandemic has created new challenges for supply chains and has also brought to light previously unseen vulnerabilities. This panel was expertly moderated by Abhishek Prakash Rao, President, Meesan India and the panellists shared their experience of the past two years in terms of rising commodity prices and what kind of supply chain constraints they had to deal with which were completely different from what they had ever faced in the past.

Badrish Sinha, Vice President, Strategic Sourcing, VE Commercial Vehicles said “One good thing that has come out after the pandemic is that the purchasing team has a say in management meetings. Prior to that when we talked of sourcing it was basically cost, inventory & what innovation you are doing. After COVID-19 they understood what type of role we are handling and what type of disruptions there are.” Also, the relationship between an OEM and a supplier has changed and trust and transparency has become a must.

Battery, Electrification & Charging Infrastructure

Paralelly in the other room, the panelists discussed technology & performance of EV batteries and also the criticality of charging infrastructure in Electrification of CVs.

The moderator for the session, Bhupesh Rathore, National Head- Corporate & Government Advisory, YES BANK set the tone of the session by sharing: “The EV industry sits at the intersection of the energy, digital and automotive sector and development in all these areas needs to be taken into account when setting up market for growth or market-driven regulations.”

The panellists also threw light on how the EV adoption story is unfolding in our country in the respective vehicle segments, how we see the EV battery technology especially for the CV (esp. LCV & MCV) segment evolving with various battery chemistries? At a business model level, how do we see the fixed battery vs. swappable battery models evolving, esp. in the LCV segment?

One very relevant topic discussed was the needs of the EV segment and EV battery technology for CV (both lcv and mcv) segments evolving with energy storage technologies, static energy and charging infra.

Deb Mukherji, Managing Director, Omega Seiki Mobility said: “There are two aspects to this, we need to see the entire battery economy as it develops in the country which will consist of the materials that go into the manufacturing of battery systems, their availability, sourcing and the entire supply chain that kicks into it. The second part is the application part of the technology, how the cells are going to be built & how different technologies have different charging times eg; rapid charging, fast charging but all co-exist together.”

Ajit Kumar Jindal- Advisor E-Mobility, New products and Technology, TATA Autocomp Systems Limited added: “Huge demand is coming up as far as energy storage is concerned. The good thing is that India is generating solar energy at a very rapid rate but a lot of the solar energy is not getting utilised the way it should be because of shortage of storage systems. The new set ups coming up are integrated with solar storage and battery storage which will push up the demand of lithium led batteries to a very large extent.”

All digital: Customer experience from sales to predictive maintenance

One of the final panel discussions for the day was on the impact of digitisation on the industry, be it sales to predictive maintenance. This panel was moderated by Harshvardhan Sharma, Head- Auto Retail Practice, Nomura and Malind Kapur, Executive Vice President Corporate Strategy & Communication Business Head Spare Parts, Piaggio Vehicles Pvt. Ltd, Rahul Sonawane- Head Sales & Services, Kamaz Motors, CS Vigneshwar, Secretary-  FADA & Deputy Managing Director, Anaamalais Toyota and Somasundaram. S -Management Advisor & Consultant. Ex-Vice President, MAN Trucks & Buses and Ex-Group CEO, Prerana Motors were present as panellists.

Malind Kapur- Executive Vice President Corporate Strategy & Communication Business Head Spare Parts, Piaggio Vehicles Pvt. Ltd threw light on how their company nagivated the pandemic and what were their learnings on digitization. He said: “India is the youngest largest economy in the world and digitization for us in the automotive space started much before COVID-19. Secondly Piaggio started its digitization journey over the last two decades and has been a leader in not just the two-wheeler space but three-wheeler space as well. People think that 3W drivers might not be digitally savvy but he stated that 83% of 3W drivers are digitally savvy.”

The session threw light on an interesting query raised by an inquisitive attendee wherein he mentioned as to how the CV industry has been an industry where on one hand we have people from the 70s and 80s still running large operations right now and on the other the Gen-Z millennials are coming in who’s outlook is very different towards digitization. So, what are the kind of things that they are actually looking for, what do they want, their route towards digitization is very different. Is there a way to accelerate the journey towards digitization through this generation?

Alternative Fuels: Green Choices

The final Presentation for the day by Shailesh Zinge, Marketing & Growth Initiatives Leader, Cummins Engine & Components Business shed light on “Destination ZERO- Path to Decarbonized Future” and focused on how climate change is an existential crisis for our generation, how decarbonization is a must and how Cummins is contributing in a significant way to address the climate change ratio.

The presentation was followed by the last panel discussion of the day that discussed the future of: Alternative Fuels such as CNG, LNG, hydrogen, ethanol etc.

The panel discussed how we need to move towards greater use of alternative fuels by 2030. The panellist stated that they have seen CNG pick up in a very big way and it’s kind of a controlled commodity price, with the arbitrage between diesel and CNG the latter has been clipping at a very rapid pace not just in cars but also in commercial vehicles & also how exciting it will be to see LNG emerge in the future.

The forum was closed on a lighter note with the commencement of cocktails and the informal networking session and a promise to return bigger and better in 2023!