LeeBoy Gearing Up for the Future

We are working on emissions, productivity, adding up more features in terms of communication and machine health.

Amarnath Ramachandran, President, LeeBoy India Construction Equipment

There are many construction equipment players in the market. What makes you unique?

We never say that we are unique, but we have pursued a different path, when we started in 2010 in India. We were a late comer as far as the rest of the industry is concern – most of the leading players are around for more than 50 years. Though we are a 54-year-old brand from USA, we’ve been in India for only over 7 years. When we entered we decided very clearly that we would not slot ourselves in the low-price category. So, we worked on making sure that all the products are at higher end and we sense an opportunity that most of the older players had not really upgraded drivelines and other parts of their equipment because they have very well-proven systems. We were starting from scratch and that’s the advantage the late comer has; we put the latest and best what’s available in the Western Europe. Most of our driveline components are from the ZF, Germany, Undercarriages are from BERCO, Italy whereas hydraulics are from Walvoil and Casappa and lubrication systems are from SKF-Lincoln.

Also, apart from positioning a machine with very reliable core components, we came out with the scheme where we have trained operators from our end. We got to make sure that our machines will not get misused and at the time they can give us feedback on the domain requirement. We put all this learning into the further expansion we have done in the upgrade. So where do we see the future going? We are working on emissions, productivity, adding up more features in terms of communication and machine health.

Today, what is your market position?

Today we have a 20 per cent market share. We have a good exports base set up in about 15 countries and have landed a very huge order from Russia and Zimbabwe. The advantages with working from the domain angle is we have paving and post paving from our US facility, we have asphalt plants from our Brazilian facility. In India we make mainly the earthmoving machines.  So, we can provide our customers with the full portfolio of what they need for their job.

What sort of value for money your graders offer?

Our products are placed at higher-end. Pricing for the different models of smaller graders will be between Rs 70 to 80 lakhs. The larger ones will cost more, and they have the duty components also which make them non-competitive in terms of pricing whereas the Chinese machines are available from Rs 45 lakhs around.

However, we make sure that the customer understands what value our graders deliver. There are features in our graders which are not available in other high-end models of our competitors. Some of them include electronic CAN controlled engine, electronic fault diagnostic systems for the whole machine from HO, new intelligent fan drive controller with integrated speed sensor, and electronic proportional control hydraulics. Also, we give automatic transmission as standard in all our machines. So, our customers get all the state-of-the-art features at a very reasonable price.

Did you launch any product at EXCON?

We have launched our two new motor graders in the 18 and 22-tonne categories: LeeBoy 990 (18-tonne, 250 hp) and LeeBoy 995 (22-tonne, 280 hp). These graders offer triple the productivity.  These are high performance machines and suitable for mining activities but eventually we plan to introduce them into road construction.

What will be your focus for next one year?

We run a five-year programme and there are many things to unveil. We are looking at adding more attachments for our backhoe loaders that will help in putting up electric light poles. We also plan to come out with a smaller grader for rural roads with an 8-foot blade. Apart from supplying this in Indian market, we see its huge demand in Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Further, we are working on modernising the larger graders with the launch of CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) in 2020. This will add another 35 per cent of fuel efficiency.