TVS Motor Company has sorted out the semiconductor chip shortage issue by tapping an alternative source, said a top official.
During the first quarter of FY23, TVSM lost quite a bit with respect to deliveries of Apache and Raider due to chip shortage, the official said.
“But thanks to our team, we were able to develop alternate [sources] and now Rider is fully back. Apache is fully back. I don’t think there will be any problem in the season. Now, this month and next month, you will see very good [sales] numbers,” said K.N. Radhakrishnan, Director and CEO during an analysts call.
These numbers can go up. TVSM is not in a hurry, he said adding “Unlike some of my competitors, I don’t dump. I don’t want to keep [with] any of my dealers more than 25 days stock. If you keep stocks for 75 days, customers will not get fresh stocks.”
Asserting that the semiconductor companies have come forward to help them, he said this will lead to selling 10,000 units of electric vehicle TVS IQube every month.
Right now, the company has received close to 25,000 bookings for TVS IQube but has a capacity to produce only 10,000 units per month. It plans to systematically ramp up the numbers month-on-month to 25,000.
On EVs, he said they were deploying more people on the digital side. “Actually, we are trying to move many people from ICE to EV, train them, make them work on the EV side,” ” he said.
Mentioning that they have lined up several EV products for the next 8-12 quarters, he said: “So Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), we know what to do, which products, what kind of interventions and which markets that will continue. But we will invest in more and more on the EV side.”
On the recently-introduced premium bike Ronin, he said that currently they were looking at 5,000 bookings for this month.
