Oracle Auto bags Rs 34-cr order from west Africa

Our Bureau

Jamshedpur, Oct 8: Oracle Auto, the manufacturer of small capacity high-maneuverability utility vehicles, has bagged a Rs 34-crore export order from west Africa for its Scavenger range of loaders and dumpers.

Speaking to The Financial Express here on Monday, Oracle Auto chairman-cum-managing director Bikash Mukherjee said the order was secured after a stiff competition from 21 European countries. Oracle was the lone bidder from Asia.

Oracle Auto, which has a technical collaboration with Agria Hispania, SA, Spain, is the latest pioneering venture in the automobile sector in eastern India after Tata Engineering and Hindustan Motors.

The order has been placed by Redemption for African Refugees (RAR), an arm of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), which looks into the rehabilitation needs of the refugees of war ravaged West African countries. The RAR initiative, being funded by the World Bank, covers building millions of houses, roads and sewerage systems for the war-displaced people of several countries in the region as part of the rehabilitation programme.

Oracle’s small-capacity smart multi-utility vehicles find a variety of use ranging from small construction jobs, to road construction, to municipal use (like garbage lifting), to opencast mining, to application in tea gardens, to defence use (for removal of snow in inaccessible border areas and in road and bridge construction in hilly terrains.)
“Our quality, price and specifications exactly matched their needs. We competed against our joint venture partner too (Agria Hispania), who had participated independently at the bid,” said Mr Mukherjee.

The order constitutes around 850 pieces of Scavenger construction equipment, including front-end loaders, mini dumpers, mobile concrete mixers and is to be executed in eight months time.