AJAX is an iconicbrand with a refreshing identity. It is redefining the future and investing innew thinking in the concreting equipment business by manufacturing intelligentBusiness Machines, says Debasis Bhattacharya, Head – Marketing,Sales & Product Support, Ajax EngineeringPvt. Ltd.

Whatis your outlook for the construction equipment sector in the country?

The globalconstruction machinery market is expected to register a CAGR of 7.58 per cent duringthe forecast period 2019-2024. The increasing focus on infrastructure anddevelopment of automation in the construction and manufacturing processes had asignificant impact on the market growth.

What are the challenges for leading playerssuch as Ajax? And, where do you see the opportunities?

Substantial delaysfrom the State and Central budgeted outlays of the earmarked funds for theinfrastructure development projects has resulted in temporal complexity havinga significant impact on the market growth of concreting equipments. Owing tothese constraints, the concrete equipment market is witnessing a slow phase ofgrowth during the start of this fiscal year, but likely to see quantum leap post-electoralpolls resulting in a stable government, from the third quarter onwardsproviding a conducive environment that will help in smoother roll-out ofmassive infrastructure projects through increased investments schemesundertaken by the Indian Union and State governments.

The concreteequipment market has witnessed a significant growth in the recent past, owingto the increased infrastructure projects undertaken by the union and stategovernments. The concrete equipment industry is getting smarter day-by-day onpar with automobile sector through the means of IoT, digitalization,connectivity, and automation, which are driving the development forward,leaving a significant impact on infrastructure projects.

What are the trends that are continuing driving thesales of your Equipment?

With the growing population and increasing demand for urban and semiurban infrastructure, AJAX is geared-up to capitalize on the readiness of themarket for infrastructure development by supplying concreting equipments forthe ready-mix concrete market. From AJAX point of view, the biggest demanddrivers for India’s RMC and batching plants segments have been the Indiangovernment’s large-scale infrastructure and housing projects, such as BharatMala Pariyojana, Sagarmala, and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.

The outlook on the RMC equipment in India is upbeat and, in keepingwith the overall buoyant trend in the construction sector, concrete segment ispoised to see robust demand. AJAX is geared-up for the challenge.

The ready-mix concrete market in India is expected to witness a steadygrowth rate during the forecast period 2018-2023. The demand for commercialbuildings, such as offices, schools, colleges, hospitals and shopping malls isincreasing owing to rapid economic development and modernization is expected tofuel market demand over the upcoming years. Moreover, development of newgreenfield airports, metro railway stations, stadiums and national highwayswill further drive the usage of ready-mix concrete in the future.

In the residential and non-residentialsegment too, which is the largest application segment of Ready MixConcrete, favourable political and economic scenario in India along with ‘Make inIndia’ initiative has encouraged aircraft and automotive manufacturers forsetting up manufacturing facilities and offices in the country, which will opennew market opportunities over the forecast period.

Which boldactions should you urgently take to propel change and stay ahead ofcompetition?

Technology has always beenthe forte of AJAX’s business at the intersection of repertoire of engineeringknowledge about concreting segment together with the core creation of customervalues through effectual customer relationship management. This makes us stand outas a market leader in concreting industry by means of greater understanding ofour customers’ needs with strong insights coupled with intelligenttechnological advancements featuring out product benefits and values to ourcustomers.

Being the legendary marketleader in concreting equipments, AJAX’s prime focus is onto the cutting-edgefeatures providing product accuracy and reliability in terms of technologicaladvancement in our concreting machines to remain competitive enough bycontinuing to be a market leader by always providing competitive advantage withproduct differentiation in the business, thereby side-lining the substituteproducts. The credit goes to AJAX engineering research team who always looks atthe buying behaviour and understands the pain points of the customers inhard-core research input in developing prototypes and coming up with newproduct solutions built-in for addressing the functioning constraints alongwith the practicability needs and operability requirements of the customers atreal-time operational site conditions.

Also, with thetremendous impact of technology on the labour market marked by continuouschange, the work environment has also become more complex, requiring new skillsand upgradation of existing skill sets. Leaving aside the complexitiesassociated with the infrastructure projects as well as the technologydisruption, the major key challenge would be the Skilled-labour shortage thatis getting reflected in the bottom-line of the industry. The ‘Skill level’ ofthe Operator greatly determines the high degree of quality and efficiency ofthe concrete batch throughput that gets achieved during the day-to-dayoperations of any concreting machine.

Our goal is to becomea truly inspiring and innovative global leader by redefining the future andinvesting in new thinking in the concreting equipment business. We manufactureintelligent Business Machines (iBM) with inventiveness, intuitiveness,innateness, ingeniousness, and inimitable features all put together inproducing ‘imagineering’ series of products.

We are emerging as acustomer-centric Indian multinational company depicting ‘an epitome ofengineering excellence’ in bolstering up Indian infrastructure economy andattaining the ‘heights of synergism’ for creating phenomenal values to ourcustomers while equipping ourselves with the right sort of attitude and thegreat calibre to invigorate a passionate drive and a disciplined work-style inaccomplishing our greater mission 2025.

What about your after-sales market supportand your dealer network?

Havingaccess to the best and finest infrastructure facilities, we at AJAX have thecapacity and capability to design and manufacture reliable and quality productsthrough path-breaking technology.

With proven on-sitecommissioning experience, AJAX's highly trained subject-matter experts in service engineeringdomain always bears in mind the objective to achieve stable and reliableperformance meeting up the design specifications and stringent qualitystandards.

In domesticmarket, AJAX has a wide geographical spread with 30+ dealersin India along with 100+ touch points catering to the sales and after-salessupport to its customers. In a bid to explore International market potentialwith our technologically advanced concreting products, AJAX is on ageographical expansion spree and had already impregnated its global foot printthereby penetrating the International market viz., Asia-pacific, Middle-Eastand North Africa (MENA) regions.

Youspoke about skills development. How about your role in contributing to employability and skilldevelopment schemes?

AJAX Business mantra is ‘Maximum Productivity;Minimal Investment’. We realise that our nation is in a dire need for skill-oriented education to boost employabilitywith the rampant growth of new technologies. Strengthening up this by feedingthe pipeline and to bolster the initiative of Skill India (NSDC), AJAX EngineeringPvt. Ltd. is taking up endeavours under its Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) program by conducting 'Vocational Skill Development Training Program' forthe skill enhancement of rural, semi-urban and urban youths for Employability.Through this training program, we have been entrusted the responsibility toempower youth by providing them the required skills sets.

This training wouldassure 100 per cent job opportunity with our customers/dealers after the successfulcompletion of the training program. These training programs will be held at ourDoddaballapur factory, Bengaluru. Later, this ‘Vocational Skill DevelopmentProgram’ will be decentralized and conducted in different regions pan-India.

Wouldyou like to share with our readers the new products and services that you planto launch/showcase at EXCON 2019?

AJAX theme for EXCON2019 is: ‘MAKE IN INDIA; MAKE FOR THE WORLD’. With the tailwinds of demand blowing infavour of concreting segment, especially with a strong emphasis onindigenization, AJAX has strategically aligned its product portfolio in linewith the Indian government’s ‘Make in India, Sell Global’ programme byindigenizing its product portfolio offering state-of-the-art machines equippedwith top-class technology manufactured at its Bangalore plant for the completebandwidth of construction infrastructure segments.

AJAX is apioneer in the Self-loading Concrete Mixing technology, and has a very strongfocus on the capabilities needed to succeed in the new market dynamics.Strengthening up its foot hold in the concreting market, AJAX will unveilvarious new products during EXCON 2019 to help Concrete Equipment buyersnavigate the unprecedented growth landscape of construction business withincreased speed, greater flexibility and enhanced quality through the marvelsof next-gen technologies.

Some of the equipment we will showcase are:

SPBP 25ZX: A hyper-productive business centaur with thedexterity of argo and intelligence of boom pump.

SPX 1204: The next-gen slip-form Concreting Paver completelyindigenized with innovative design, thinking and delivering maximizing efficiencywith minimal efforts.

ACURA SERIES: The Launch of ACURA Series ARGO 2500 and ARGO4500 Self Loading Concrete Mixer (SLCM) would offer completely a new-fangleddimension to the world of concreting with inimitable features, viz., Load cellweighing system (patent pending), Telematics, Electronic Drum Control Unit, SmartConcrete Batch Controller (CBC) etc.

DebasisBhattacharya, Head – Marketing, Sales & ProductSupport, Ajax Engineering Pvt. Ltd.