TVS, GMR joint venture to go pan-India

CHENNAI/HYDERABAD: TVS and GMR, two of South India's most prominent family businesses, have been in a very silent joint venture in the aviation logistics space for more than a year-and-a-half now. Starting with the Hyderabad airport, where the JV is already operational, the plan is to go pan-national. Such a coming together of these two groups has never been discussed in the media until now. The tie-up is between TVS Logistics, whose MD is R Dinesh, and GMR Hyderabad Airport Resource Management. GMR Group head GM Rao's son Kiran Kumar Grandhi is one of the directors of the JV. The TVS company, which has a 51% stake, didn't share details. However, Hemanth DP, COO of the GMR group company, said the idea behind the alliance with TVS Logistics was mainly to tap road feeder services from and to the airport. "TVS is a very established player in the trucking business. We are developing the feeder services as more and more airlines are in need of an extension of their network," he said. "If you come in Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Hyderabad and go in a Jet Airways to Tirupati, technically you book one seat only but it is in two different airlines. Similarly, in the cargo business, we want to establish the road feeder network to connect the last leg. In some cases, it will be by road." The JV is currently operating Aero Express, the bus service that connects the airport to major locations in the city. This is a service that has been scaled up in recent times with more frequency and routes. Vikram R Jaisinghani, the GMR group company's CEO, said, "There is an opportunity for TVS to offer road feeder services and they may be one of the players in the logistics space at the airport." Then there are warehousing services, where GMR believes players like TVS can work with it. Jaisinghani was bullish about his company's plan to develop a cargo hub. The JV has its origins in a company called Radi Logistics, where some TVS members had minor stakes and an associate of Dinesh owned the biggest stake.

TVS to re-launch electric scooters in 2011-12

NEW DELHI: Chennai-based two-wheeler maker TVS Motor Company today said it will re-enter the Indian electric scooter market with some existing and new models in the next fiscal.

The company is currently carrying out test runs of about 50 electric scooters across various towns in the country.

"We are working on introducing electric scooters and these are being experimented for the launch. By some time next fiscal, it will come (to the market)," TVS Motor Company President (Marketing) H S Goindi told reporters here.

About 50 electric scooters, comprising some of its existing and new models, are being tested across the country, he added.

"We will launch only scooters in electric mode. The products will initially run on lead acid batteries and later we may develop some other technology also," Goindi said.

The company will produce these new products at its Mysore facility, he said.

When asked about the electric two-wheeler market, Goindi said: "Business in India picked up few years back and also dropped because of variety of issues. Now, subsidy has also been offered, but still it is very sketchy... We feel, business will again pick up."

Earlier, TVS had launched electric scooterette 'Scooty Teenz Electric' in April 2008 with high hopes of selling around 40,000 units per year. However, it stopped the production in May 2009 as it received a lukewarm response from the market.

The company had also shelved its plans to launch electric three-wheelers. "We have an electric three-wheeler, which we had planned to introduce but there is no market for such products. So we don't have any plans to launch it now," Goindi had said in June 2010.

The Budget for 2011-12 proposed to set up a National Mission for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles to encourage manufacturing and selling of alternative fuel-based vehicles.

It also proposed to cut excise duty on development and manufacturing of hybrid vehicle kits to 5 per cent from the existing 10 per cent, besides fully exempting customs and counter-vailing duty on import of special hybrid parts.

In November last year, the government had announced a Rs 95 crore incentive package for the electric vehicle makers for the remaining part of the 11th plan.