Shell has launched the Shell Advance Fuel Save 10W-30 lubricant in India today, focused on the two-wheeler segment. The Shell Advance 10W30 is engineered to enhance fuel economy and deliver monetary savings. The product provides savings of ~INR 2500 annually for daily riders who clock higher running hours/distance on the road.
The company claims that consumers can ride an additional 5 km per litre on the same amount of fuel and minimize their running costs. As per Shell, the changes are evident from the second oil service onwards.
Shell Advance Fuel Save is a fully synthetic product made of pure plus technology that brings cost economy by improving bike mileage to unleash the maximum potential of two-wheelers.
Speaking to Express Mobility, Debanjali Sengupta, Country Head, Shell Lubricants India, said that there are other products in line for the Indian market. She said, “There are other products in the Helix family, which is for the cars, which also looks at fuel economy. And that’s something that we will bring over the course of the year. But it is not just going to be about fuel economy, it will have other things.”
Looking at how the past two years affected the automobile industry, Debanjali said, “The lockdown time and the second quarter of 2021, we saw that the automobile oil demand was severely hit. And even data indicated that the automobile was hit because people were not traveling to work, and because they were not moving, they thought an oil change is not required immediately.”
“However, after that when things started opening up, we saw that people wanted more personal transport. That’s where we were expecting the auto demand to come back. Unfortunately, the industry was hit by the chip shortage.”
The two-wheeler industry was a different scenario, however. “Thanks to COVID our whole way of living changed to click and delivery. If you look at this category, two-wheelers were the livelihood for companies such as Zomato and Swiggy. So two-wheeler maintenance and good fuel economy became important for them.”
“They could not afford any downtime. And that was a positive impact on companies like Shell because our focus has always been on providing top quality and a lower cost of ownership. During the initial days, there was a search suddenly because people needed to get back on the road,” added Debanjali.
Shell’s lubricant business grew 25% in 2021 over 2020, and ~12-13% over 2019. Once offices opened up, and day-to-day routine slowly became normal, volumes started to pick up. “Maybe it was not a very sharp recovery, but there was a good recovery,” said Debanjali.
The ongoing chip shortage has also affected Shell, as the Country Head points out, “We supply to OEMs for factory fill and factories were producing less. That way Shell got indirectly impacted because production fell. Thankfully, because of relationships with multiple partners, we made up for it.”
