Product innovation With the capacity increase by the yearend, JK Tyres current domestic market share of 1819% would

rise to over 20%. The target is to reach a domestic turnover of Rs 60bn next fiscal. This business projection will also strengthen its position as one of the top OE suppliers to vehicle manufacturers across the range including cars, jeeps, MUVs, LCVs, trucks, buses, tractors and heavy mining and earthmoving equipment. Since pioneering steel-belted radials in India, JK Tyre has been seriously involved in product innovation. It has benchmarked itself in all product categories with the use of cutting-edge technologies. It has reached and surpassed stringent global OE standards for rolling resistance, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), ride, handling and grip performance parameters to meet the European Union tyre labelling criteria from January 2012. It is expanding OE market footprint with approvals for the US and NAFTA markets. JK Tyre will be the first Indian tyre company to have OE approvals for supplies to these discriminating markets. JK Tyre, which pioneered many processes in producing eco-friendly green tyres where silica is used with appropriate replacement of carbon black, has developed close linkages with HASETRI, the research institute which it set up in 1991 and the RP Singhania Centre for Excellence (COE) for Tyre and Vehicle Mechanics at the Chennai campus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. The COE is involved in studies in the areas of polymer chemistry and predictive techniques for product performance improvement. Said Dr Singhania: We have been working diligently to offer products which are more ecofriendly. Considerable amounts of work have gone into developing alternative fillers to carbon black in order to attain optimum mix and balance between conflicting properties of the tyre such as rolling resistance, wet grip and wear. In not too distant a future, we should be offering tyres with even further lower RR and better wet grip. Both HASETRI and the COE are playing a key role in maintaining JK Tyres technological edge in critical products like TBR and PCR among others. We are very advanced with our predictive tools and technologies. COE is a major success story of industry-academia cooperation. We are extremely satisfied with our efforts in this area, Dr Singhania said. Market leadership Some of the breakthroughs that JK Tyre has achieved include significant reduction in raw material evaluation costs and time, development of new materials and silica-based compounds for improved performance in rolling resistance and mileage. The COE has helped us develop a new model to predict tyre performance like rolling resistance, tyre wear, tyre durability etc, Dr Singhania noted. JK Tyres thrust on technology and the R&D infrastructure will help it sustain its technological leadership in the years to come, he said. Adding to its capability is JK Tyres marketing capability to retain and sustain customer satisfaction for which it has made substantial investments in brand building and creating extensive distribution and customer care networks. It has over 130 selling locations, servicing more than 4,000 dealers across the country. We have re-invented passenger car tyre market by setting up specialised retail outlets Steel Wheels, which provide value added services to the tyre consumers, Dr Singhania said. Special Tyre Care Centres for our truck/bus radial tyre customers under the brand Truck Wheels have been set up along the highways, servicing our valued commercial

customers. These are some of the customer-friendly initiatives which differentiate our brand with the competition, he said. Customer satisfaction is our overall driver and various strategies in the company are focussed on achieving or exceeding customer expectations, he explained. From designing tyres that exceed customer expectation by offering trouble-free service over the full service life, to investing in dealer distribution network and launch of innovative tyre care service and repair centres, JK Tyre hopes to continuously increase the satisfaction and experience of its customers, Dr Singhania said.