"But we clearly knew that competition will come into those segments as well. So parallelly, we developed a complete range of products which also serviced the mass market.

"Those two years helped us to develop those products and get them into the place. Now we have more than 2000 trucks in various haulage segments operating in the field. Initial feedbacks have been very encouraging. And with the markets going up we are expecting volumes too. And we raring to get back to our 2011-12 numbers," he says with a certain confidence.

Of course, today, the overall industry is turning around quite robustly. Although the construction and mining segment has pitied out in terms of decline, in terms of getting back to its original growth rates there is still time to go. "But I think in the last three months we have really seen that the volumes that had come down to almost 1500 a month for 25 tonnes and above have now gone back to about 2300 per month. This is very good; on its peak it was 3700 per month. The complete recovery has a long way to go but the good news is that it is on its way," he shares.

AMW's ambition has been to progressively cover the entire HCV market. "We are almost there now. We are at about 85 percent of the addressable market," he says explain the logic behind having a bigger portfolio. "If your dealerships need to sustain over a longer period then they need a larger portfolio of products. Every product goes through a lifecycle both owing to the application and the industry. So the larger portfolio of products you have you tend to beat the cyclicality and your dealerships have a better chance of surviving.

"Due to the prolonged slowdown in the market, the dealerships - who are really our front-end - have taken a severe beating. So our strategy is to continue to build the product pipeline so that in the next cycle - which I believe will be a boom cycle - everything will go great for a few years. But in the next downcycle there will be enough products in the portfolio for the dealers to mitigate that period."

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