Market trends in construction and access equipment. 

Even rental equipment is benefiting from digitalisation. Fortunately, when we talk about digitisation, we see it as a newly emerged concept. Earlier, there was not much emphasis on digitisation, but now everybody’s talking about efficiency, telematics, IoT, digitisation, and drones. 

We account for more than 15 to 20 percent of the entire infrastructure industry, and with that including all equipment rentals, they are now playing a much larger role. With the equipment’s going very expensive now with BS4 coming up in a big way, manpower is going expensive, other things that we’re getting very costly these days due to migration issues, a lot of issues have popped up where many of the problems the entire infra industry is saying. 

You need to have the right integration with the right ERP, with the right telematics and the right technology in place. If we talk about the fleet, the younger fleet is coming up. Earlier, it was all about used equipment and old equipment. We ourselves are a leading rental company in India. So earlier, if we talk about 10 years back, it was all about old equipment, and not everybody was really aware of the technology and the equipment. 

Digitisation and other trends in equipment and rental industry 

Everything today is getting digitised, and everyone is talking about paperless inspections so that there’s been no wastage of resources. This is the right time that we are here and we are looking forward to a very bullish approach. In terms of the rental concept, unfortunately the penetration was not high, but with the formation of CERA, and some of the government bodies are making all possible attempts to promote the rental concept, and as a result, the rental penetration has finally crossed 30 percent against the earlier 8 percent. 

If we talk about unorganised rental players, I think it is even more than that. In terms of cranes, high-tonnage cranes, piling equipment, and mining equipment, they are also available for rental companies. We are buying new equipment, but we are not really calculating the inflation part of it or the depreciation part of it. 

Then manpower issues, breakdown issues, maintenance issues. So, when we cover all of these, it is going to be very high; it will take four to five years to achieve a big breakthrough for that equipment precisely because all of this equipment is highly intensive and highly capital intensive, and it has to be majorly funded by these NBFS (Northbound Funding Strategy) and banks. 

So, we need to do the right calculation, and we will definitely be launching one rental calculator. When you’ll be able to get the right figures, you’ll know with the right parental figures whether to buy or rent. So renting is always the best option, and you have all of them.

Future prospects 

We are also requesting all the OEMs and manufacturers to deliver the machines with digitisation only as a standard accessory or maybe a standard component as a part of machine sale; it should always be equipped with best telematics, and not otherwise. To be more precise, it should be integrated with the best available technology. 

We always talk about safety and all the big companies are really working hard on safety; we at CERA, are also striving hard to address the safety concerns and cover all the safety aspects. We are already tied up with many of the safety councils to save human lives. If we talk about scaling, it has picked up, but not really picked up well. We are again very closely working with all the stakeholders on infrastructure, the skills council and everyone, and this is really needed. Technology, the right equipment, and the right scaling together make a difference. 

CERA is now, fortunately, a member of the Global Rental Alliance. So, I would like to give you a brief overview of it. We have only six to seven countries that, as of now, are members of global rental lines, and this is surely an achievement recently. Japan, Brazil, Europe, and the American rental association are there. I think we were the seventh one. So, this is a great achievement that we are going global.