“Along with cricket & football, CEAT is open to other sports depending on scale & RoI”

CEAT, the flagship company of RPG Enterprises, was established in 1958. Today, CEAT is one of India’s leading tyre manufacturers and has a strong presence in global markets. CEAT produces over 15 million tyres a year, offers the widest range of tyres to all segments, and manufactures world-class radials for heavy-duty trucks and buses, light commercial vehicles, earthmovers, forklifts, tractors, trailers, cars, motorcycles and scooters as well as auto-rickshaws. Like every other brand in this category, the pandemic has disrupted them, but the brand has kept their wheels moving.

When it comes to tyres, most brands stress on safety and durability when they talk to their consumers. For CEAT, their constant endeavour is to ensure that they work towards safer and smarter mobility solutions for their consumers. With quality being the focus, they strongly believe in providing high quality and thoroughly tested tyres to their consumers keeping safety in mind. Starting from the stage of culling consumer insights to product development and testing as well as brand communication and after sales service, the single-minded focus has always been to strive towards delivering safety, superior product performance and differentiated experience to their consumers. That’s what makes the brand stand apart in a very highly competitive and price sensitive market where there are several internationally renowned brands.

In an exclusive interview with Adgully for the new ‘MARKETING MINDS’ column, Amit Tolani, Chief Marketing Officer, CEAT Tyres Ltd, speaks at length about how the brand has carried out its operations during the pandemic, the continual focus on introducing new products through strong R&D work, the strong association with cricket and much more.

How has the journey for CEAT been in the last 3 years? The pandemic is still continuing and causing disruptions in many industries. How has brand CEAT managed to navigate and storm the weather for the last one year and what are the kinds of challenges that the brand has had to encounter?

Like other businesses, CEAT also had to bear the brunt of the pandemic. Manufacturing and supply chain was affected. However, we managed to be agile and quickly rebounded. The demand, though initially muted, soared because people preferred using private vehicles over public transport. Commercial category was classified under essential category. This helped us tide over the challenges.

Every tyre brand is talking about technology and radial features in their product. How are you different from the competition and what are the compelling reasons that make the tyre buyer decide to buy a certain brand of tyre?

At CEAT, we constantly endeavour to ensure that we work towards safer and smarter mobility solutions for our consumers. We strongly believe that providing high quality and thoroughly tested tyres to our consumers will ensure their safety on the road. Right from the stage of Consumer Insighting to product development and testing as well as brand communication and after sales service, we strive towards delivering safety, superior product performance and differentiated experience to our consumers. That’s what sets us apart. Latest product development technologies and state of the art plants help us deliver innovative and high-performance products to consumers. Puncture Safe Bike tyres and Low rolling resistance passenger car tyres are some of the industry leading products that we’ve launched in the Indian market. We are also leveraging technology downstream for our channel partner touchpoints and consumers to give them a hassle-free, quick and convenient experience.

Tyre is a low involvement category. Most buyers trust their mechanics and dealers, who are still very influential. Any shift happening here and are vehicle owners becoming very conscious in the decision making before the final brand is purchased?

Even though tyres are a grudge purchase, vehicle owners do realise the importance of tyres when it comes to vehicular safety. We see surge in searches, implying that people are investing considerably in researching about tyres and digital channel working as an enabler in this purchase journey.

The supply chain had been disrupted due to the pandemic. How did CEAT manage the distribution during those times both with your OEMs and your dealer networks? Is India ready for buying tyres online?

The pandemic has accelerated our digital journey. We have introduced new business models like doorstep delivery, fitment at home (in select cities), delivery at CEAT Shoppe, etc. – consumers can opt for any of these options from our e-commerce site. It is after following stringent safety guidelines that the distribution is in place. Our primary focus is safety of our partners and stakeholders.

While you are associated with cricket in a big way, but you went for a Bollywood star – Aamir Khan – to endorse the new product offering from CEAT. What was the reason and how did you see Aamir as the perfect brand fit?

Aamir Khan perfectly embodies CEAT’s core values of integrity, passion and innovation. Aamir also brings in strong credibility and trust, which we believe will lend strongly to our premium and high-performance range of sedan and SUV tyres, CEAT SecuraDrive. While we will continue our strong association with cricket, we will have Aamir endorse our premium 4-wheeler range.

You have built a great brand property through IPL and cricket – ‘Strategic Time Out’ and ‘CEAT Cricket Ratings’. How has this helped the brand and are you planning to extend this to some other sports?

Since tyre is grudge purchase and linked to once in a three-year purchase cycle, as a category, one of the objectives that we drive is saliency. IPL is one of the biggest cricketing events in the world and as a brand we could piggyback on the scale it offers. We have been associated with IPL for the last 7 years and every year we have been able to meet our brand objectives. CEAT Cricket Ratings has been a 25+ year old property and one of the strongest properties that has been associated with CEAT.

We are already present with Football in Europe with Torino FC association. We are always open to other sports depending on the scale and RoI that we are able to derive.

What is the outlook for the tyre industry for the coming year? How is your brand going to navigate the next one year as the road ahead is still bumpy? Where are your revenues coming from? Is it from the replacement market or from the OEM business?

The beginning of the last year was challenging on account of the pandemic. However, the industry bounced back in the wake of pent-up demand as well as certain other factors like import restrictions on certain categories. We have gained market share across categories in the last year. With the severity of the second wave of COVID-19 and strict lockdown restrictions, business has seen some impact as the consumers are not stepping out of their homes and the demand has taken a dip. However, as the situation hopefully normalises in the coming weeks, we are expecting demand to pick up and business to resume its prior gained momentum. We shall continue to invest in consumer initiatives over the course of the year.