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Swedish firm making luxury buses in India for India
Bengaluru: Swedish transport solutions provider Scania AB has started making luxury buses and coaches here for inter-city and intra-city services across the country, a company official said on Monday.
“We are making world class luxury buses and coaches in India for safe and comfortable drives in cities and states across the country at affordable price,” Scania commercial vehicles chief executive Martin Lundstedt told reporters at the new plant at Narasapura in Kolar district.
Set up at a combined cost of Rs.300 crore on a 40-acre area in the backward district, about 40km from here, the plant has a capacity to roll out 1,000 buses and coaches a year, with chassis from its adjacent truck production facility set in 2013.
“The modular plant will serve as a hub for Indian and export markets in Asia, West Asia and Africa to meet the growing industry and transport needs in developing countries and emerging economies,” said Lundstedt.
The $10.7-billion global automotive major had set up the truck facility to roll out 2,500 units per annum for mining, roads, infrastructure sectors besides logistics.
“We will double the production capacity to 2,500 buses and 5,000 trucks over the next five years and ramp up our headcount to 800 from 300 presently,” said Scania India’s MD Anders Grundstromer.
With a view to increasing localisation, the company has tied up with a number of tier-1, tier-two and tier-three vendors and suppliers for sourcing components, accessories and spare parts.
“Our goal is to draw on local talent and competence and combine it with global experience. The gameplan is to make our Indian facilities part of our global network and create value across our global value chain,” Lundstedt said.
The firm has secured orders from state-run transport corporations in Karnataka and Maharashtra.
“We have orders to supply 35 luxury buses from Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), 30 units from Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) and 150 coaches from private operators such as SRS Travels in Bengaluru and Golden Travels in Mumbai,” Grundstromer said.
Though Scania is entering India a decade after another Swedish transport major Volvo came and consolidated its presence in trucks and bus segments, Grundstromer said he was upbeat on the Indian market, which is set to grow on economic revival and huge investment plans in building road network across the country.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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