Daimler, the world’s largest manufacturer of Medium- and Heavy-duty trucks unveiled its exclusive new brand of trucks for the Indian market. The brand, BharatBenz, will offer Indian customers an entire range of trucks from 6 to 49 tonnes across various applications.
Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG & Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars; Andreas Renschler, Head of Daimler Trucks and Daimler Buses; and Marc Llistosella, Managing Director and CEO of Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, unveiled the BharatBenz brand at the production location in Oragadam, near Chennai, India.
“We are sending a clear message with our new truck brand: Daimler is at home in India. Our BharatBenz trucks are the right combination of Daimler’s DNA and India’s market know-how. These trucks will be developed and built in India, for India, and by specialist employees from India,” said Dr. Zetsche.
“The BharatBenz product range will draw on Daimler Trucks’ entire range of technological expertise in order to best address the special needs of Indian customers. The product range in the Light-duty segment is based on the Fuso Canter tried-and-tested platform, while the heavy-duty range is based on one of our Mercedes-Benz trucks platform. With these platforms the trucks have been ideally tailored to the needs of our India’s customers”, Marc Llistosella adds.
The choice of the “Bharat” part of the name reinforces Daimler Trucks’ commitment to serving the local market.
The company will roll out trucks in 2012 from its manufacturing facility at Oragadam, near Chennai. Spread over about 160 hectares, the facility also houses a state of the art test track, which is a testimony to the promise of uncompromising quality and performance. Over one million kilometers of testing have already been achieved by the company. DICV has a total dedicated investment of over INR 4400 crs (approximately €700 million).
