TNT is considering acquisitions to grow its India business under its aim of displacing DHL asthe country’s market leader by 2010, a senior manager told CEP-Research. The Dutch group has
recently embarked on a major €100 million, five-year investment in the domestic Indian marketincluding air and road express transport services. TNT sees itself as number two in India atpresent with a 21% (international) market share.“TNT aims to be the leading integrated player in the Indian market in the next five years. Topursue accelerated growth TNT India is also open to strategic alliances and acquisitions,” AbhikMitra, country general manager, TNT India, told CEP-Research. To date, TNT has grown organically inIndia.
TNT currently cooperates with Elbee Express in the domestic market. Elbee Express, with 1,000employees, offers air and road express services to 11,600 locations across India through its own131 branches and a network of some 600 franchisees. It offers worldwide services through the TNTExpress network.
Under its India strategy, TNT launched domestic air express services using capacity oncommercial flights on February 1, and road services were scheduled to start by mid-March 2006. Theroad fleet has been increased to more than 1,000 vehicles, depot capacity has tripled to over300,000 sq ft, and the company expects to have 1,600 employees by the end of the year. TNT plans toleap from 50 locations to 144 locations by end-2006. “This expansion announcement is in line withTNT’s global strategy of focusing on building quality networks in emerging markets,” Mitra added. “This launch makes TNT the first multinational brand in India to offer international and domesticservices using an integrated Air and Road network.”
TNT CEO Peter Bakker, in a recent interview with Reuters India, did not rule out acquisitions inthe country but said there was “nothing to report at this point of time”. He forecast that theIndia express delivery market would grow to some €1.5 billion by 2010 from €634 million atpresent.
Speaking at a conference in India last week, Bakker said that TNT might look at B747 freighterservices between India and Europe in the future, depending on market growth. Better roads woulddrive growth for the express sector but India still had a long way to go in terms of improving itsinfrastructure, he pointed out.
