每日吃瓜

How do you view the Indian market? What are the opportunities?
We truly hope the Indian market develops faster. At the moment it is really a big opportunity. We hope it lives up to its promise. We believe it and bet on India; we are here because we are keen on India, and now we really need to see the infrastructure coming up and the plans being executed, and so on. If India will do everything needed on the infrastructure front, it will mean a lot of construction work is going to happen. That way, India is a huge opportunity. Also, with more OEMs setting up equipment plants in India, component manufactures like us have a great opportunity because the market is developing. We really hope that things will come through and I think everybody is expecting volumes to go up.

Could you elaborate on your new product range?
We have launched a new series of products for the Indian market, at the recently concluded Excon. For this range, there are many applications but the major applications come in construction equipment like pavers, backhoe loaders, cranes, drill rigs, etc. Applications are also there in agri-equipment, basically tractors and harvesters and in the material handling segment, like forklifts.

What are the technological value-adds in this product range?
We should state that this is a product where we use the concept of cutting the production costs to an acceptable level and we are at a high level of top quality technology that put us a little bit ahead of the competition in the same segment. The customer of course, needs to see and test the product. This is an expandable product, so it offers many kinds of technical features.

Was this product imported or manufactured here?
This is designed and developed here in India - engineering, design, development and manufacturing, all of it one hundred percent in India. At Danfoss, we have the top technology for valves. With this bottomline, the business unit named Valmova which is fully owned by Danfoss, intends to promote technology at more affordable prices. Our level of technology is very effective, with a price that is not really cheap but is good value for money. So products that are not imported are manufactured at this site, both in Brazil and in India. We develop and manufacture products locally, in Brazil and India. We have other product lines which compete globally with top technology. With Valmova, we want to be very high-tech at the same time very cost-effective also.

Is this product range exclusively for the Indian market?
It is. The product is standard for India and South America. In terms of customisation, we are capable of developing special features depending on the application. But then it is engineering together with cost-effective measures. But basically the concept of the product is to attend to the emerging market aspirations, price competitiveness while offering affordable technology. So these kinds of products really put us in a very competitive and good position, to offer something that is superior in terms of performance, quality, pressure, leakage, etc.

Do you have plans to launch more such products in the future?
Yes, we do. Eco 40 is the smallest one from our range. So for next year, till the end of 2014, we plan to introduce the next size that is the Eco 80 that is 100 litre per section. And then of course, there is more planned for the future, but everything will depend on how we succeed in developing the business and how it develops. However, we believe that these two sectional valves really have a great potential.

What is your marketing strategy?
We are really an industrial company so we focus more on the OEMs. On the basis of these, we will focus on the application and then offer the customer value for what they already have or for the application. And then we also wanted to set up a distribution network to get us growing these OEMs even in the retail market. Basically, our strategy is for the OEM market.

Do you have a dealer distribution network?
We are starting a distribution network. Today we are using power solution dealers but we need to have a stronger and more aggressive strategy for our dealer network.