Jaipur-based Kamal Coach Works (P) Ltd. (KCW), that has been building coaches since 1948, has diversified into an engineering company to build tip-trailers, tippers, ambulances etc., in the past few years. In this exclusive interaction, Rajesh Rajgor spoke to Kunal Kasliwal, Director and Puneet Gupta, COO to gather vital information about their company’s recent developments and medium to long term plans
Long before the Indian OEMs who etched JVs to set their own bus bodybuilding plants catering to mofussil bus demands from STUs and school buses, Kamal Coach Works (KCW) has been the backbone to several Indian OEMs. Director Kunal Kasliwal reminisces: “We have built bus bodies for a number of prestigious automobile manufacturers, government institutions and fleet operators over the years. We were also pioneering in introducing double-decker bus bodies in Jaipur and up north. We were also operating city buses in Jaipur back then. My grandfather, Shri Kamal Kasliwal, started the company in 1936 and since its inception our ideology has been to manufacture high-quality products, for which we have invested in quality manpower, infrastructure and manufacturing processes.”
“This has aided the company’s development of engineering capabilities in the coming years,” he adds. As time progressed, KCW diversified into load bodies fabrication and engineering to serve tippers, trailers, ambulances and fire trucks. There is a subcategory of Kamal Coach Works that makes automatic car parking systems known as Kamex. Kunal shares: “We are also into dealerships under Kamal Co. brand for Audi, Daimler Commercial Vehicles, Tata Motors, Honda, Hyundai and Bajaj Auto. We also have Kamal Auto Finance which provides micro finance loans and we have Kamal Ratan Engineering Institute in Jaipur. The association for automobile bodybuilding and engineering is in its eighth decade now and only growing with the passage of time.”
Bolstering Design and Engineering
KCW has two production units, one in Jaipur and another in Newai. In order to be in sync with changing market demands, the company’s centralized CV development team is closely linked with the marketing team. COO Puneet Gupta reveals: “Our Jaipur plant caters to passengers’ segment in commercial vehicles i.e. buses and ambulances and the Newai plant takes care of tippers, tip-trailers, trailers and fire trucks. At both the plants, we have a centralized product development team that works with marketing in order to design the products. Whether it is CV or passenger vehicles, the products will be designed keeping in mind safety, road worthiness, aesthetics and customer requirements. We design and manufacture all our products as per the CMVR guidelines and AIS certification from reputed testing agencies like ARAI or ICAT.”
Each production unit is divided into multiple lines to streamline products to manage demands. Puneet adds: “There are three production lines in the Newai plant which help us with production of 750 tippers per month, 120 trailers and 250 SCV applications per month. Three lines cater to this production and help us plan our orders. Similarly, our Jaipur plant has two lines, one for ambulances and another for buses. We can produce 100 ambulances per month and 50 buses per month. The beauty of the plant is that we easily manage fluctuating demands – if we have low demand for ambulances, we can covert that into the bus line. The plant is flexible to interchange based on the demand of the products.”
The company has delved substantially into manufacturing of tippers and its range is the testimony of the production finesse and capacity they have developed. “We have tippers range ranging from 1.8 cubic meters to 29 cubic meters on rigid chassis and tip trailer up to 40 cubic meters. Adding to this, in the last 2-3 years we have produced pneumatic suspension trailers and right now we are producing 80% pneumatic suspension trailers of total production in our line. We have been able to convert a lot of traditional customers to pneumatic suspension trailer users which are safe and road worthy CVs,” informs Puneet.
One of the important factors that KCW keeps in mind is the appropriate payload they are able to provide to the customers. “The main factor is the payload. If we enable higher payload with lighter materials and provide sturdy bodies, the customers would be drawn to us. We work on different grades of steel to make the products lighter and provide customers higher payload. We are supplying rock bodies with Hardox steel which has high tensile strength that can take care of bigger rocks dropping from backhoe loaders,” explains Puneet.
High-Quality, Tested Products
While the company has been diversifying into truck trailers, tippers, fire trucks and ambulances, they have only further enhanced focus on quality and certification. Kunal adds: “We have high capacity and highly automated plants for processing products according to customers’ specifications. Apart from this we have ensured that we are amongst the few in the country who have a range of products homologated as per AIS standards in the field of ambulances, buses, as well as trailers and tip trailers. Our emphasis on turnkey solutions products with customer’s need at the centre helps us create products that offer optimum cost of ownership.”
In a short span of delivering high-quality products, KCW has acquired customers like Tanushree Logistics, New Jai Shankar Transport, Khaitan Logistics and KM Trans Logistics, amongst many others on the trailer front. “In ambulances, we executed a World Bank-sponsored project of 140 ambulances for the state of Uttarakhand. Out of the 140, 100 of them were basic life support ambulances and 40 were advanced life support ambulances. This was also a turnkey project wherein we procured the base ambulance shells, duly fabricated and equipped the same, to the extent that the vehicles were also registered by us. We even arranged to impart working knowledge of the equipment and gave to them possession of drive-away vehicles. MEDIKAM® is our trademark for these medical application vehicles,” describes Kunal.
Professional organised players like KCW have been able to build confidence in the customers not only based on their engineering capabilities, but reliable quality, delivery and after sales service. KCW has been successful in driving big players and names to buy from them instead of an open unorganised market. “Big institutions have realised that our trailers may be costlier today but it will help save cost in the future. We have achieved the desired results of trust, safety and quality in the organised sector,” Puneet states. In tippers, KCW’s primary customer is Tata Motors. “Our major customer is the country’s biggest CV manufacturer – Tata Motors – and almost 85-90% of our production is dedicated to them. From a SCV needing 1.8 cubic meters, MCV needing 10.5 cubic meters to medium and heavy commercial vehicle requiring 29 cubic meters of tip trailers, we design and manufacture products for every customer’s requirement. KAMEX TrailBlaze is our successful brand for trailers,” Puneet shares.
Managing Vendors and Orders Through the Pandemic
One of the biggest challenges during the pandemic was to maintain a steady flow of spare parts and aggregates. The phased wise unlocking and different rules in different states meant the supply chain remained a bit disturbed. Despite this, KCW stayed not only in touch with their vendor partners but also apprised them of the order pipelines. Kunal reveals: “Our vendor partners are our backbone and we totally rely on what our vendors supply to us. They are the key in the chain for us to deliver top-quality products. We took them together along with us especially in the trailer and ambulances segment. We collaborate and collate real time information not only in designing but also towards homologation and certification of our products.”
Notably, KCW not only has separate teams for purchase and product development but also separate store teams for both the plants. The product team also focuses on vendor development. “We have focused on learning and partnering and thus participate with leading aggregate suppliers like York, BPW, Tata Hendrickson, Wabco, etc. We have to rely on high-end vendors as our trailers and tip-trailers too are engineered products and not fabricated ones. Similarly, our ambulance is a specialised product. Hence, our supply chain runs from vendor partners that are based out of America, Spain, China, Germany, Italy and all across the country. Some of our vendors from India have utilised our facilities too for research and development and such synergies strengthen our bonds. We are thankful for the wholehearted support we receive from our suppliers and look forward to many such successful collaborations,” asserts Kunal.
Probe him about the order pipelines and medium to long term plan in the current pandemic-induced slowdown and Kunal says: “In tippers we are thankful to have open orders from Tata Motors and in the first quarter of this year we produced 500+ tippers. April onwards, the market has again been slower. However, we are optimistic for a good recovery August onwards.” KCW has put in a lot of efforts in the past few years to ramp up production and were in the middle of two-fold expansion. The company’s primary target is to achieve full utilisation of the capacities. “We are looking forward to tipper lines giving us an output of 750+ and trailers to give us 150+ that will be full utilisation of our installed capacity,” Kunal informs.
“The second part is our range of capital investment in research and development lined up for BS-VI homologation this year. As the chassis platform changes, so do our product offering in buses. We got the certification during the lockdown phase for the ambulances. Here again, we have the honour to be the supplier of choice to leading OEMs, both on chassis based as well as monocoque platforms,” he adds. The company is also open to other truck-mounted applications like garbage compaction trucks, refrigerated containers and fire trucks. “We know we have a taste for multiple projects and if we find something exciting coming our way, we definitely would like to expand our product portfolio. Our filtering criteria revolve around whether we can offer a sustained improvement in the customer experience backed with technology. So, whenever we make a decision to enter a product line completely, we go into the depth of the product segmentation traditionally in India as well as globally. We analyse the supply chain, the market outlook and customer adaptability for the products in 5-10 years. Given the current market scenario, we look forward to doubling our overall turnover, primarily through enhancements in trailer and tippers segment within the next three years,” concludes Kunal.