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History about Ashok Leyland (ALL):
Ashok ley land was set up in 1948 as Ashok Motors in collaboration with Austin Motor Co, England to assemble Austin cars, by Raghunandan Saran, whose son was Ashok. Production began in September 1949, at the factory situated at Ennore, north of Madras, and soon the first indigenously assembled A40 Austin car was rolled out, Later, in 1950 an agreement was reached with Leyland, UK getting sole rights to import, assemble and progressively make Leyland trucks for seven years. In 1955, the company was renamed Ashok Leyland with equity participation from Leyland Motors. It became famous for its double-decker buses (the first to make them) with 50% indigenous components. In 1970 it delivered1, 000 6x4 Hippo tipper trucks to the Indian Army and its design remains even today at the centre of Army trucks.
In 1987,when the Hinduj a group acquired Ashok Leyland (by acquiring the offshore Leyland stake in the company) its journey in technology began with Iveco, the Italian commercial vehicle (CV) manufacturer which wanted to introduce its expertise in India. Iveco later took a stake in the company too. But in 2007, the Hinduja brought out Iveco's stake. In the mid-1990's, ALL explored getting into car manufacturing but abandoned the idea, as it was a different business from CVs. The Hinduj a group is 14billion transnational conglomerate, founded by late P.D.Hinduja in 1914and earlier focussed on trading and finance the traditional business of Sindhi Shikarpur merchants. The group's activities now span various fields like trading, project development, automotive, banking and fiancé health care IT/ITEs, real estate, energy and chemical &agribusiness. It has a presence in 37 countries, and employees more than 70,000 people. Ashok Leyland is the group's flagship company. The well-known four Hinduja brothers Srichand, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok, control the group competently supported by members of the next generation. But the family is not involved in the day to day operations of the businesses, which have been entrusted to professionals. The Hinduja family has consistently been on various Rich Lists; and for long were the richest Indians in UK.
This 70year old company, the second largest Indian manufacturer of commercial vehicles (CV) was perceived as almost crippled since 2013 with market down. Annexure-I is very...