VOLVO BUSES MERGE WITH VECV

in a surprise move, Volvo Buses india has merged with VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV).

- Deepti Thore

It was in 1996 that Volvo entered India with an intention to manufacture trucks that would be many generations ahead of the trucks available in the market then. The trucks that rolled out of the Hosakote facility on the outskirts of Bangalore stirred a change. It was nothing short of a revolution. The bus business of the company followed almost a decade and a half later. It shared the Hosakote premises with the truck business and started rolling out the famed B7R 12 m rear engine bus to a public that was used to front engine buses. Leaving for some attempts to introduce modern rear-engine buses in India like the Neoplan low floor model by a Pune-based company, the Indian masses were oblivious to how far buses have grown in technology, comfort and safety.

After leading the top end of the bus market in India through a variety of rear engine bus models including a hybrid city bus, Volvo Buses India has called it quits. In a recent announcement, which surprising comes against Covid-19 situation and an economic environment that is said to be the most difficult after 1979, has it that the Volvo Buses India has merged with VECV’s bus business (they make front-engine buses for inter-city, staff, tourist, school, etc.) to form a new business vertical that would be headed by none other than Akash Passey, Senior Vice President, Region International, Volvo Bus Corporation and also Senior Executive Advisor to the Swedish India Business Council (SIBC), Stockholm. With another premium bus maker Scania having come to India and left, perhaps not finding this market lucrative and against the deep restructuring of the CV business at Volkswagen Group, the departure of Volvo Buses in spirit at least from India does not bode well for the modernizing Indian the bus market. Not after establishing the modern standard for buses in the country, both at the intercity and the city level.