B2B PURCHASE - JANUARY 2020 B2B January 2020 | Page 8

RCMME
Cover Story
2020: road to
consolidation
Akin to the dance of democracy, the flux in the Indian economy has meted out mixed reactions
from the construction equipment sector. The year 2020 will be year for consensus as many of
them expect their businesses to gain ground in the New Year.
T
he Indian economy is in a state of flux,
good news for some and trying times for
others. This flux has made itself prevalent in
the construction and construction equipment sector
too and the industry stakeholders are navigating the
slowdown in their own indigenous ways. For many
2020 will prove to be a silver lining on the cloud.
Meanwhile akin to a lazy amoeba, the economy
seems to be protracting its misadventure and
depending on individual political affiliations people
have a different take on the causative factors.
In real estate many experts believe that the
audacity to turn housing units into the most
valuable business asset without paying any heed
to market realities has led to unsold inventories.
The purchasing power has shrunk and but project
prices have shot up. Like the Chinese real estate
bubble burst, a course correction may save the
day but in a democracy, it remains to be seen how
many souls in the echelons of power will make
way for the desired dose of corrective measures
needed.
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B2B Purchase
January 2020
As far as the infrastructure segment is concerned
a lot remains to be done. VG Sakthikumar, Managing
Director, Schwing Stetter India Pvt Ltd rightly points
out “We cannot compare our development to
many of the European and Asian countries because
there is a big gap in infrastructure, which needs to
be filled at any cost. So, when there is a big gap
and when there is going to be a mechanised way
of construction of doing that, it is not possible
to avoid machines and do all this infrastructure
activity in any other method. So, we need to have
modern machines to build India. The 3-4 months
of slowdown in the business should not make one
question the fundamental background in which the
country is operating at this current point of time.”
The journey from a developing nation to a
developed nation ensues that the scope of work which
remains is huge, so there is no dearth of business
potential but the bottlenecks need to be addressed.
Debasis Bhattacharya, Head – Marketing, Sales
& Product Support, Ajax Engineering Pvt Ltd, “Prior
to 2014 all the national highway projects were