P.K. Ganguly, Head Marketing, Balkrishna Industries Limited (BKT) interacts with B2B Purchase about the company’s reach in the northeast, the future projections and his views on BKT as a brand.

What brings you to the North-Eastern states?
We are into construction equipment, mining infrastructure and mining core. Hence these are the three main areas that we are concentrating in India and with our unique range and world-class quality tyres. We have four factories that are going at a full throttle in production and we also feel that there is huge market availability in India. The North-East region is one area which is going to grow very fast and we feel that North-East is the one area where we can definitely grow. We can contribute largely on the infrastructure development activities that the government is planning. There is a long-term business prospects in North-East as road construction will be with full blast in the next 10 years. That will bring a lot of tyre requirement. BKT is concentrating on these.

Considering the terrain challenges in North-East why people should prefer your products?
Our products are specifically made for working in difficult terrains. We have the entire range of products which is going through very severe operating conditions. It might be for mining or even for construction equipment. We have the entire wide variety of product to apply in the rough terrains.

How important is Conmac in this context?
Conmac has become an important platform to reach out to our existing as well as potential new customers. We have not just come here to showcase our tyres and go back. Our main focus is to create partnerships across the untapped markets in North-East. We are trying to put up dealers at every place to ensure   availability of tyres for our customers.What’s your strategy to improve market presence in the North-East?We are developing in this region and though we did not have good presence, we are developing and by next one or two year will be fully active everywhere. This region is not like MP and Maharashtra as it has got a very different set up. The terrain conditions, the remoteness of this area add to the challenges.

How do you look at BKT as the global brand?
We are an Indian made global brand because BKT is typically ‘Making in India and Playing in the global arena’. We are playing in the global markets across 132 countries having solidly established in Europe. We have our feet in US and Canada too. Our agri tyres brand Agrimax is very popular and well accepted globally. When it comes to tyre, rubber pricing is one of the challenging areas.

How is it impacting your business?
Around 50 per cent of our raw materials are petroleum based and 40 per cent are organic rubber.  As the petroleum price across the world is ever increasing, it is clearly impacting our production cost. So just to offset that, we are forced to increase our product costs. We don’t know when this will end up!