The Hindu Business Line : Ashok Leyland to invest Rs 70 cr on R&D units

Ashok Leyland will invest Rs 70 crore in its R&D facilities at Hosur (Karnataka) and Ennore (Tamil Nadu) in the next five years. In the last two years, the company has invested Rs 20 crore.

It will be recruiting around 1,000 people to cater to various integration of services that will be undertaken shortly.

Currently, the company has 400 people working at its Ennore and Hosur units. It intends focusing on catering to services such as product engineering, supply chain end-to-end management and market analysis.

One of the services is a customer relation programme called `customer connect'. This programme is ideally designed and suited to understand the customer needs.

Through this programme, the company intends connecting its chain of 283 dealers and authorised service stations across the country. The dealers will be connected to the company through a central server that will be placed at one of the R&D facilities; it will calibrate all profiles and thus analyse the customer.

The programme will be executed in 18 months.

The company is going one step ahead by working on platforms that will help the principal and its vendors work simultaneously on product development, said Mr N. Chandrasekaran, General Manager - Information Technology, Ashok Leyland.

Recently, the company acquired Avia (commercial vehicle manufacturer) of Prague (the Czech Republic).

"The acquisition will also give us a modern, international vehicle for our light and medium commercial vehicle range of trucks for India and other export markets," said Mr R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, in a press release.

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