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TAFE plans to launch new variants

By K. T. Jagannathan

CHENNAI DEC. 17. The Rs. 800 crore Tractors and Farm Equipment (TAFE), the flagship company of the Amalgamation group, is set to unleash a slew of new products.

Indications are that it will launch six new variants, mostly on the existing platforms, by the end of 2002-03. It has already gone in far a test launch of a region-specific tractor. The tractor, Sarja, designed to the peculiar requirements of farmers in Maharashtra and touted as the symbol of power, will be officially launched in Maharashtra in a month or so, according to Mallika Srinivasan, Director of TAFE.

Ms. Mallika Srinivasan felt that in the emerging dynamics, production of mere general purpose tractors alone would not suffice to garner market share. "These have to meet the requirements of local needs," she said. Hence, products needed to be fine-tuned and aligned to the cropping pattern, agro-climatic conditions and other uses, if any. Sarja would, perhaps, be the first of a series of region-specific product initiatives that TAFE had up in its sleeves.

The company had in the current year launched TAFE 4410 Samrat, considered the Ikon among tractors. It had also rolled out TAFE 5900 Gajraj and MF 5245 Mahaan. Ms. Mallika Srinivasan said the past several months had proved "an exciting period for us". The company, she said, laid much store by running a `tight schedule' with a twin objective of managing the financials well and keeping the long-term interest in tact. The initiatives on the product innovation front, she claimed, were funded entirely through internal accruals. The director was confident that TAFE would more or less maintain its sales when the year drew to a close. In the first half of the current year ended September, the company reported a dip in sales of just 2 per cent. The industry itself is expected to end the year with a 15 per cent or so dip in sales. Despite the `trough situation', TAFE consciously pushed a `lot of investment' into research and development and product innovation. She was confident that the current exercise on making the organisation leaner even as it strove to lay greater emphasis on innovation and the like would keep the company in good stead `to ride the wave when it happens". In her reckoning, things should look up with a better monsoon next year. Primarily because of these exercises, TAFE, she claimed, managed to improve its share even in a falling market. According to the September figures released by the Tractor Manufacturers' Association, TAFE had beefed up its market share to 16.47 per cent from 13.52 per cent in the corresponding period last year.

Ms. Mallika Srinivasan claimed that the state-of-the-art Samrat tractor was well received in the market. The new technology has got the customer endorsement," she pointed out. The fact that Samrat was sold on a cash basis clearly proved this, she said.

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