Auto parts, engine oil and tyres

The trade

How this trade really works

From the factory to the customer, each person in the chain wants something different. Most of what goes wrong comes from the gaps between them.

The company

Makes brake pads, clutch plates, filters, bearings, engine oil or tyres. Wants its parts in every spare-parts market and its name in the mechanic's mouth. Mostly sees only what it billed out to distributors.

The distributor

Holds stock for a region or a city. Buys in bulk when there is a scheme and supplies retailers and big garages on credit. He carries a wide range of slow items so that he never has to say no. Wants fast items, steady schemes and no dead parts for vehicles that have stopped running.

The spare-parts retailer

Sits in a parts market or on the main road of a town. Stocks parts for the vehicles common in his area. Buys from several distributors and several brands, and sells mostly to mechanics who come with an old part in hand.

The mechanic or garage

The real decision-maker. The vehicle owner rarely asks for a brand. The mechanic picks the part, often the one that gives him the best margin, the best scheme or the least comeback from the customer.

The vehicle owner

Wants the vehicle back on the road today, at a price he can bear. Trusts his mechanic more than any advertisement. Notices the brand only when a part fails early.

Each part has its own small market

A clutch plate for a tractor model that is everywhere in Punjab and Haryana is almost useless in Kerala. A filter for a scooter that is popular in the south may hardly move in Bihar. Your catalogue looks national. Your real demand is a patchwork of vehicles. The same part can be your best seller in one district and dead stock in the next one.

The mechanic decides, not the customer

The customer says the brakes are making noise. The mechanic says which pads go in. He chooses what he trusts, what is in stock at the nearby retailer, and what pays him something extra. That is why engine oil companies chase garages with points and gifts. A brand that the mechanics of a town do not trust will not sell there, whatever the advertisement says.

Big parts markets set the price for a whole region

Kashmere Gate in Delhi, Pudupet in Chennai and Mullick Bazar in Kolkata are not just shops. Retailers from smaller towns come there to buy. Prices quoted in these lanes travel back to every town around them. A distributor who sells there moves a lot of your goods, but he also passes on a lot of your goods to people you never meet.

Fakes eat the fast movers first

Nobody copies a slow part. The copies come for your fastest filters, your best-selling brake pads and your most trusted oil. They look the same on a crowded shelf and cost the retailer less. Your sales in that town fall quietly. The distributor says the market is slow. In truth the market is fine. Someone else is selling your name.

Engine oil lives and dies in the garage

Most engine oil is not bought off a shelf by the vehicle owner. It is poured in during a service. The garage buys it from a retailer or straight from a distributor. Whoever wins the garage wins the oil change, service after service. A garage that changes brands takes a steady flow of oil with it, and you will not hear about it from anyone.

Tyres move with the season and the money in the village

Tyre sales are not even through the year. Before the monsoon, worn tyres feel dangerous and people replace them. Truck and tractor tyre sales follow harvests and the movement of goods. Big tyres are heavy money to hold. A dealer who stocked the wrong sizes for his area has his cash stuck in rubber for a whole season.

Old models never quite die

A vehicle stops being made, but it keeps running for years in small towns and villages. Parts for it are still needed, slowly. The distributor must carry them, or the retailer goes to someone else. So every distributor carries a long tail of slow parts. Some of it is service. Some of it is stock that will never move again, and nobody has checked which is which.

Where the money quietly goes

What you cannot see today, and what it costs you

You see dispatch, not what the mechanic fitted

Your sales report counts what left your factory. A distributor taking a large lot before the scheme closes looks like growth. It may sit in his godown for months. You learn the truth only when he slows his next order, or asks for a bigger scheme to clear it.

You cannot tell which vehicle is selling where

You know a distributor bought a lot of brake pads. You do not know which pads, for which vehicles, moved in which town. So you send the same mix to every region and wonder why some distributors complain of slow stock while others run short of the same items.

You find out about fakes from a complaint, not from your sales

By the time a mechanic complains that your part failed, and you find it was a copy, the copies have been in that market for a long time. The fall in your genuine sales was there earlier. Nobody was looking at it item by item, town by town.

Dead parts for dead models are hidden in good stock

Each distributor's godown holds parts for vehicles that hardly run in his area any more. On your books they are sold. In his godown they are a loss he will one day ask you to share, through a return, a credit note or an extra scheme.

Tyres in the wrong size, in the wrong town

A tyre that sells fast in a hilly district may hardly move on the plains. When a dealer is stuck with the wrong sizes, you hear about it only at season end. By then the season is over, and moving those tyres to the right district costs freight and time.

Oil sold to garages that you never meet

You know how many cartons of oil a distributor took. You do not know whether it went to a few big garages or to many small ones, or whether it is still sitting. When a large garage quietly switches brands, you see it months later as a slow drop in that distributor's orders.

A season, the way it usually goes

The story you already know

It is the end of the scheme month at a brake and clutch parts company near Pune. The sales head is pleased. Every distributor took a full lot. The factory ran extra shifts to make it. The number on his sheet is the best of the year.

In a distributor's godown in Ludhiana, cartons of clutch plates for a light commercial vehicle stand next to boxes of scooter brake shoes. The tractor parts went out in a week. The light vehicle parts have not moved, because that vehicle is rare in his area. He took them only to reach the scheme target. In Madurai, another distributor has the opposite problem. Mechanics keep asking for those same clutch plates. He has none, and he has quietly started selling a cheaper brand to keep his retailers.

A few months later the Ludhiana distributor asks for a return. The Madurai distributor's orders have dropped, and he says the market is slow. In Kashmere Gate, the company's fastest brake pad has a copy on many shelves. Genuine sales of that pad in the whole region have been sliding for weeks. Nobody connected these things. The sales head plans a bigger scheme for next month.

What you can now decide

Decisions you could not make before

Send each region the parts for its own vehicles

When you can see which parts move in which towns, you stop sending the same mix everywhere. Tractor parts go heavy where tractors work. Scooter parts go where scooters crowd the roads. Distributors get less stock they cannot sell, and run short less often of the stock they can.

Move stuck parts to the town that needs them

The clutch plates sitting in one distributor's godown are exactly what another distributor is short of. Move them, do not make them. Same goods, no new cost. A return avoided in one place is a sale saved in another.

Look hard at a market when a fast part suddenly slows

Vyavora does not catch fakes. It shows you where the genuine sales of a fast part dropped while the rest of that distributor's business held steady. That is the market to send someone to. You hear about it in weeks, not after a complaint.

Clear old-model parts before they become a fight

You can see how long parts for old vehicles have been sitting with each distributor. Some are slow but still needed. Some will never move in that area. Decide early which to pull back, which to move and which to stop making.

Put schemes where mechanics are already choosing you

A scheme that pushes stock into a godown does not make one mechanic choose your part. When you see real sales by town, put your garage and mechanic effort where your part is already trusted and growing. Do not waste it where the vehicle hardly runs.

Stock tyres for the season before it starts

Last season's sales of each tyre size, dealer by dealer, tell you what each area really used. Send the right sizes before the rush, and you do not spend the season moving heavy tyres from one town to another.

Plan production from what was fitted, not what was billed

When you can see sales moving out of distributors, you can make what the market is using, not what the last scheme pushed. That means fewer emergency runs on one part and less factory time spent on parts that will sit.

Where you get ahead

Where your competitor keeps losing

You know your market vehicle by vehicle

Most part makers know only their own dispatch. You will know which of your parts move in which towns, for which vehicles. When a new vehicle starts filling the roads in a region, you see its parts moving and can make more of them before others notice.

Distributors prefer the company that cuts their dead stock

A distributor carries many brands. He leans towards the one whose stock does not get stuck. When you move his slow parts to another town and send him what his area uses, your brand becomes the easy one to carry. Then he pushes it to his retailers.

You react to copies while others are still arguing

When genuine sales of a fast part fall in one market, you see it in that market alone. You can act there quickly, with the distributor and the mechanics, while competitors are still blaming a slow season.

Your garage effort lands where it counts

Engine oil and parts makers spend heavily on mechanics. You can put that effort where the oil and parts are actually moving out, and see if sales in that area rise after it.

The same season, with Vyavora

The story, told again

It is the same scheme month at the same brake and clutch company near Pune. This time the sales head opens Vyavora before he sets the targets. He can see, distributor by distributor, which parts sold out of their godowns last month and which are still sitting.

He sees that Ludhiana is moving tractor parts fast and has hardly touched the light vehicle clutch plates in a long while. He sees that Madurai has sold out of those same plates and has nothing left. He asks the Ludhiana distributor to send his stuck plates to Madurai, and sets the next lot for each distributor around what their area really uses. Ludhiana gets more tractor parts. Madurai gets its clutch plates. Nobody asks for a return.

He also notices something in Delhi. Genuine sales of his fastest brake pad have dropped in the Kashmere Gate distributor's figures while his other items there are steady. He sends his area manager to the market that week. The copies are found while they are still new on the shelves. At month end his number is a little smaller than last year's scheme month. But this time, what he calls a sale is a part that went into a vehicle.

Why the others agree to it

Everyone in the chain is better off

For the distributor

He gets a full Vyavora of his own, usually paid for by the company. It has GST billing, stock, a billing counter, accounts, what each retailer and garage owes him, and WhatsApp messages to his customers. The company's parts and prices arrive in it by themselves and stay current, so he never bills an old rate on a part whose price changed. The company sees only its own goods. It never sees the other brands he carries, his buying prices, his profit, his retailer list or his bank balance.

For the spare-parts retailer

If he bills on Vyavora, he gets GST billing, stock he can trust, and a clear list of what each mechanic and garage owes him. His slow parts show up early, so he can return or swap them before they sit for years.

For the company's area manager

He no longer has to ring distributors to ask what is selling. He can see what moved in his area and walk into a distributor's shop with a real question about a real part.

What this does not do

Vyavora shows sales and stock only for distributors and shops that bill on Vyavora. It has no back door into a distributor's other software, and it does not buy data from anyone. It does not tell you which vehicle a part was fitted to, or the vehicle owner's name. It does not catch copies by itself; it shows you where your genuine sales fell, so you know where to look. It does not track each individual piece or handle claims for failed parts. It does not plan salesman routes, and it does not tell you what will sell next season. It shows what is happening now and what happened before, clearly enough for you to decide.

Straight answers

Questions people in this trade ask

My distributors carry many brands. Will they agree to show me their sales?

They show you only the sales and stock of your own parts. Vyavora never shows you the other brands they carry, their buying prices, their profit, their retailer list or their bank balance. That hard line is why distributors agree. They also get a full billing and accounts system, usually at your cost.

Can I see which vehicles my parts are selling for in each town?

You see which of your items each distributor sold, by day. Since each of your parts fits certain vehicles, that tells you which vehicles are driving your sales in each area. Vyavora does not record the vehicle the part went into.

Will this stop fake copies of my parts?

No software stops copies. What Vyavora does is show you when genuine sales of a fast part fall in one market while everything else there holds steady. That is usually where the copies are. You learn it early, and you know exactly where to send someone.

We sell engine oil mostly through garages. Does this help?

You see the oil moving out of each distributor, week by week, pack size by pack size. When a distributor's oil sales slow, you know before his next order shrinks, and you can ask which garages changed.

My distributors keep old Excel sheets of their stock. Do they have to type it all in again?

No. Vyavora reads the files a business already keeps, such as Excel sheets and PDF bills, so old records do not have to be typed in by hand.

What about distributors who refuse to join?

You will not see their sales. Vyavora sees only those who bill on it. Start with the distributors who are already close to you. Others can join later, once they see the billing and accounts they get without paying.

Your part sells where its vehicle runs. Everywhere else, it only sits.