Do companies copy your
formula?
They try. The point is that while it’s easy for me to say
these things, these are very difficult things to copy. This needs discipline, it needs a certain
vision. We have put something like 2,000
crore of investment in Chennai. Your business plan should be robust and you
must have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. What will you do if the India market doesn’t
keep pace with your original thinking? So we have all these things, we believe,
in our pocket. So we are very successful. And very month we are getting
stronger and stronger. We fitted it in the OEs in 12 wheelers, not even in the
10 wheelers, because we chose that vehicle after doing a lot of research in the
market. They were very keen to fix our
product in 12 wheelers. They said nothing is going to go wrong on that, because
we have done our R&D. It is doing good in both Tata Motors and Ashok
Leyland outlets. Our competitors have fixed it to the 6-wheelers and
10-wheelers. So we have what we call a 360 degree approach. We are not only
looking at the first life of the products. We are looking at the 2nd life of
the products. We are working with our traders. We have developed something
called 100-odd traders which we call as ACRs-Apollo Certified Retailers. We
have tread rubber for them, special tread rubber. We are looking at the 2nd
life of the product. We have upgraded their tools at our cost (almost at 1 lakh per account). These 100 odd dealers
are spread across the country.
Is there a big market for
retreaded tyres?
There is a huge market for these tyres. See the advantage
you get is on the cost per kilometre. The tyre is the second most running
expenditure after fuel. One pair of truck radial tyres cost 40,000. If
the product doesn’t work, the dealer can end up losing his money and the
end users can arm-twist this guy to give
his receivables back.
You have also been quoted
as saying that you are shifting your entire production out of Kerala?
I
would say have been misquoted. We have 4-5 facilities in Kerala. We always have
to do a little bit of balancing of how much to grow in Kerala and how much not
to grow in Kerala. We started our lives with Kerala and we’ll stick to it. We
have 2 plants in the State. You know how strong unions are in Kerala. At times,
you have to become touch. It’s not easy to do industrial relations in Kerala.
Everybody knows. We are the largest manufacturers in Kerala now. And the state
government is, I would say, very supportive of us that we give employment
opportunities to so many and we have not walked out of that state.