In a market where workshop efficiency directly determines profitability, eight minutes per set of four wheels adds up faster than most shop owners realise.
They say the partnerships that last are not built on contracts alone, but on careful judgment, mutual respect, and a shared belief in what is possible. That belief was tested and proven nearly three decades ago, when US-based Hunter Engineering Company chose Bengaluru-based Madhus Garage Equipment as its India partner. It was not simply a distribution agreement. It was an act of faith — in a company, in a market, and in a relationship that has since grown into one of Hunter’s strongest and most enduring partnerships anywhere in the world.
On 15 July, 2026, Madhus announced the official India launch of the Hunter Road Force WalkAway, Hunter Engineering’s newest diagnostic wheel balancer. The event also marked Madhus’ reaffirmation as Hunter Engineering’s exclusive partner in India for 2026 and beyond.
The Hunter Road Force WalkAway combines Hunter’s autonomous WalkAway inflation system with its industry-leading Road Force diagnostic technology, reducing four-tyre changeover times by up to 45% while continuing to identify ride and vibration issues that conventional balancers cannot detect.
Demonstration
Mr. Nikhil B, Managing Director of Madhus Garage Equipment, chose to make his point not with a presentation but with a live demonstration. For this live demonstration, he used a Hunter Revolution Walkaway tyre changer, capable of fully autonomous tyre demounting. He mounted a tyre and wheel assembly on the new Road Force Walkaway Balancer, connected the inflation hose, set the target pressure, enabled bead seating, closed the hood — and walked away. The machine did the rest.
While the first wheel inflated and checked its own balance, he moved to the second, removed the valve pin, and prepared it for the balancer. By the time that wheel was ready, the first was done. He kept moving between machines, never waiting at any one of them. His only real input on the tyre changer was to angle the tyre correctly over the mounting head — everything after that was automatic. Every component that contacts the tyre or wheel is made of plastic, eliminating the risk of damage to alloy rims or sidewalls.
The Road Force Walk Away balancer added another layer of intelligence to the process. Unlike older systems that required manual measurement entry — where a single wrong input meant an imperfect balance the customer would feel on the road — this unit uses 3D lasers and cameras to scan the entire wheel assembly automatically. Rim diameter, width, spoke location, profile, and runout are all measured in a single pass. A laser pointer then shows exactly where to place the wheel weight. No guesswork. No error. No ambiguity.
The real argument behind the demonstration, Mr. Nikhil explained, was about manpower — the most persistent challenge facing workshops and tyre shops across India. Training helps, but technology helps more. A less experienced technician can operate the system reliably. An experienced one can run multiple jobs at once. The machine does not replace the technician. It makes every technician more productive, he said.
Changing Equation
Mr. Tom Gant, Regional Manager – Asia, Hunter Engineering Company, said the launch markswhat he describes as one of its most significant product introductions in one of its most important global markets. The product addresses a problem that every workshop owner knows intimately but rarely frames precisely: the time a technician spends waiting on a machine is time not spent on anything else. The equipment changes that equation by automating the most time-consuming parts of the wheel balancing process with minimal technician involvement.
Standard balancing measures weight imbalance but not how a tyre behaves under the actual weight of a vehicle on the road. Hunter’s Road Force measurement fills that gap — assessing loaded tyre and wheel performance, identifying force variation, and recommending optimal positioning. The result is fewer vibrations, fewer unnecessary tyre replacements, fewer warranty claims, and fewer customer comebacks, Mr. Gant added.
Hunter employs over 30 engineers dedicated to new technology development, while a separate team supports discontinued products for up to ten years — a level of after-sales commitment unheard of in the garage equipment industry.
Geopolitical disruptions and shifting trade routes are a reality that Hunter navigates constantly. As a US manufacturer, the company is less exposed to US tariff pressures than most of its competitors. For shipping, the approach is one of continuous adaptation — rerouting through the Arabian Sea into Jeddah for Middle East markets, crossing Central Asia through Mongolia when Russian routes are unavailable, and working closely with freight partners to keep delivery timelines as predictable as possible regardless of what is happening in the world.
The Way Forward
For Mr. Nikhil, the arrival of electric vehicles is not a disruption to Madhus’ business — it is a tailwind. Wheel alignment, wheel balancing, and tyre changing are as essential for an EV as they are for a petrol or diesel car. If anything, the transition to electric is pushing car owners to demand higher service standards, which in turn is pushing workshops to upgrade their equipment. That is precisely where Madhus plays, he said.
On local alternatives, he said, “Madhus does not compete with them, in the same way a Mercedes does not compete with a Maruti. Both exist, both serve a purpose, and customers graduate from one to the other when they are ready. Madhus has recently introduced a more affordable product range to address the mass market, but even there, the differentiator is service, spare part support, and reliability — not just price.”
Looking ahead, Mr. Nikhil sees advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) calibration as the next significant opportunity. As ADAS become standard on Indian vehicles, accurate wheel alignment will become a prerequisite for ADAS to function correctly. Hunter, already working with global OEMs on integrating ADAS calibration into alignment workflows, is well placed to bring that capability to India when the market is ready. For Madhus, that moment — when a car comes in for alignment after an accident and leaves with both alignment and ADAS calibration completed — is not a distant possibility. It is a planned next chapter, he added.
The Dinner That Started It All
The story of how Madhus and Hunter came together is one of patience, persistence, and a dinner that changed everything. Mr. Ravi B, Founder of Madhus Garage Equipment, had been visiting Hunter’s stall at international trade shows every year since 1987 — asking questions, studying machines, and quietly building a case for why India was ready for Hunter’s technology. Hunter’s response, delivered by Mr. Alan Kennedy the then Regional Manager for Asia of the company, was polite but firm: India was not the right market for such advanced equipment.
Mr. Ravi invited Mr. Kennedy to see India for himself. He came to the Auto Expo in Delhi, was impressed by Madhus’ display — but being Mr. Kennedy, he did not stop there. That evening, he took a group of Madhus engineers out for dinner, deliberately without Mr. Ravi, and spent the night questioning them on electronics, software, and vehicle technology. What he found was a team sharper and more capable than most distributor teams he had worked with across Asia. The next morning, he returned and apologised for underestimating India. Madhus was appointed Hunter’s India distributor shortly after.
From that starting point, the partnership grew rapidly. Within ten years, Madhus had climbed from outside the top hundred distributors globally to the top ten. Within fifteen years, it was consistently finishing in the top three. In 2024, Madhus received Hunter’s President’s Club award and was inducted into the President’s Club, an honour extended to only a handful of distributors globally.
Along the way, Madhus became Hunter’s beta testing partner in India — receiving new products before global launch, testing them in real-world conditions, and feeding findings back to the US engineering team. When Hunter launched the DSP600 3D wheel aligner, the first unit sold outside the US was sold by Madhus, to a dealer in Hyderabad.
Beta Testing Partner
One of the most telling examples of how the Madhus-Hunter partnership has shaped global product development lies in truck wheel alignment — and the story begins with India’s roads.
Indian trucks are built for conditions that American or European engineers had simply never encountered. Multi-axle configurations with twin steering, narrow roads demanding extremely tight turning radii, and OEM specifications that did not exist anywhere else in the world — all of this meant that when Hunter introduced truck alignment equipment designed for American conditions, it needed to make changes fast to adapt to Indian conditions. Hunter responded with lightning speed and made those changes and in just a few short years Hunter had more than 90% market share in the truck wheel alignment business in India.
It was, as Mr. Ravi puts it, “a lesson in what India is really about — and to Hunter’s credit, they took it seriously. A global company asking a distributor in a developing market for technical feedback, incorporating that feedback, and then building it into their product for the world, is not something that happens often. It happened here. And that willingness to listen, adapt, and trust is perhaps what has kept this partnership not just alive but genuinely productive across 26 years.”
Over the last ten years Madhus has been the beta testing partner for multiple Hunter products. This is a further testament to Madhus’ technical capability, where the technical team understands the kind of feedback the engineers at the factory need. They are able to provide high quality feedback, which helps Hunter develop a product not just for the US or India but for the entire world.
Today, thirty-nine years after Mr. Ravi started the company with his wife’s support and an engineer, Madhus is launching Hunter’s latest Walk Away system for the world market — and his son Mr. Nikhil is stepping up to carry the vision forward.