Ashok Leyland India

Ashok Leyland is the second largest commercial vehicle manufacturing company in Chennai India. Being part of the medium and heavy commercial vehicle segment, in 2007-08 this company had a market share of 28%.

Ashok Leyland manufactures 18 to 52 seater buses which have been bought by many bus companies in India.

It is estimated that 8 out of 10 Metro state transportation buses in India are from Ashok Leyland.

India has trains which transport many people a day but Metro state transport claims to carry more than 60 million passengers a day. In the past this automobile company in India manufactured 16-25 ton trucks but recently it has added 7.5 – 49 ton truck ranges to meet demand. This improvement in services has been made possible by its collaboration with Japans Nissan Motors.

History and Future Plans of Ashok Leyland
Ashok Leyland Company established in 1948 was created with the sole purpose of assembling Austin motors. They manufactured Leyland comet buses which became so popular that by 1963 every state transportation company in India had the buses and 8000 were in service.

After a short time the company produced another kind of bus known as the Leyland Titan. This bus was modified with a heavy duty constant mesh gear box and the O.680 engine. Over the year, these buses have been known to be reliable and strong.

In 1987, Ashok Leyland India in collaboration with other companies launched the “cargo” range of trucks. They had factory fitted cabs and used Iveco engines. Although the company does not produce the cargo trucks anymore, the cargo cab is still in use by the Ecomet range of trucks.

This company has also worked together with Hino Motors in Japan to create H series engines. These engines had 4-6 gas cylinders and conformed to emission norms in India. As a result they became popular for their fuel efficiency.

It was in 1993 that this company hit it major milestone. It was the first automobile company in India’s history to get ISO 9002 and TS16949 corporate certification. Today Ashok Leyland is a leader in the automobile commercial vehicles sector. It has an annual turnover of more than 2 Billion US dollars selling around 83,000 vehicles annually.

Since this company exports vehicles, it has hired 12,000 employees based in 6 factories around India. This company has plans of extending its services globally to offer their services on a wider base. It also plans on collaborating with John Deere to manufacture backhoe loaders and wheel loaders in 2010.