Touching 1 Billion Lives
Greaves Cotton is a purpose-led company. Our purpose is to empower lives and it reflects in our dedication to put consumers at the heart of the integrated auto ecosystem to drive sustainable mobility across the entire value chain. So when you look at our value chain, we have components, and we have the vehicles (two-wheelers or three-wheeler). We have service, multi-brand service and multi-brand spares. Then we have financing of EVs. So when you look at the entire value chain, so Greaves Cotton now touches every part of that value chain through 20,000-plus mechanics, 10,000-plus retailers daily.
We also have five million-plus engines on the road. We have hundreds of thousands of vehicles running on the road. The idea is at every point of time through the value chain, we are touching people and the goal is to continue to make an impact by offering sustainable solutions with the right value proposition of the right total cost of ownership and uptime to the masses. The idea is to democratise sustainable mobility and empower people. I think this is the overarching purpose.
Panchamrit Target
We are investing in innovative technologies. That aligns with the Panchamrit initiative. If you look at our focus on fuel agnostic power train solutions, these include CNG, biodiesel, ethanol and electric options. This flexibility obviously enhances the energy security. It also supports renewable energy sources. When you look at other examples that Greaves Cotton is involved in, then we have Greaves Engineering division working on gensets and they recently launched CPCB4 compliant gensets. That significantly reduces NOx by about 90%. Other areas include clean technology and multifuels.
Then we have installed solar power in several of our factories. In fact, they roughly generate about 50 lakh units annually. So it obviously contributes to a reduction in the carbon intensity. We have also planted over 5,000 trees. Water conservation practices, too, are used at our plants.
EV Adoption
India has done a lot to encourage sustainable EV adoption. As of 2024, when you look at it, about 5% of sales of the total two wheelers have turned electric, and I think the figure is closer to 53% in the three wheeler segment. But to get to the future, obviously, we need to continue to keep doing a few things. The awareness has improved over the last couple of years and the acceptance of the technology is getting better. The range and the total cost of ownership, at least in the two and three wheeler, is established.
And we also probably need to work on making sure that the sales and the service part continue to improve. While India has made considerable progress, we still have to focus on local manufacturing components, policy support, consumer awareness, and infrastructure, but I am quite optimistic that we are headed in the right way.
Sustainable Transportation
I think there are several different steps that can be taken. One, we have just talked about sustainable mobility or the electric mobility adoption of the two wheelers, and three wheelers. Electric mobility also means sustainable solutions like CNG, which can be leveraged for commercial vehicles.
We need to look at subsidies or incentives where appropriate. Then the second point is probably the infrastructure. How do we build the charging infrastructure, the swapping infrastructure? These will help both the public and the private sector. I think that will be the key part. Then how do we collaborate with public transportation solutions? How do we innovate smart mobility solutions? For example, these days, fleet management solutions or tracking systems can be leveraged to optimise traffic management and improve the user experience. So, sustainability can clearly drive some of these and we can move towards that. And especially in India, the public transportation systems are already moving in that direction. The fleets are moving towards electric and that can be accelerated in the two-wheeler, three-wheeler and the four-wheeler segments.
Union Budget 2025
Firstly, there is a need to strengthen the green mobility infrastructure, which means charging network both in urban and rural areas. And maybe that can come through public-private partnerships. That is point number one. Promoting R&D: I think in order to promote advanced clean technology and next-generation solutions, it is very important that we also explore cost-effective and India-centric ways of bringing some of this technology into India. I think that is the second part.
Thirdly, it is about manufacturing capability. India can and has the opportunity to become the manufacturer of EV components or sustainable components. How do we build up that supply chain? I think that is an area for improvement.
Last, but probably the most important is how do we upskill? Whether those are our engineers working in the factories or R&D centres or the service technician who have to deal with customers. How do we foster industry and academia collaborations to bring in more industry-ready people? I think these are some points that can probably be looked at.
