Mumbai: Gifting ‘bulldozers’, albeit the toy version, to near and dear ones for birthdays and weddings, is the latest fad in India. So, it is little surprise that a whopping 20 per cent of the total toy sales in India are now powered by these toy demolishers. The Rs 15,000-crore Indian toy market for plastic toys and construction sets models makes up 0.5 per cent of the global market share. With imports from China declining in the last three years, domestic toy demand is forecast to grow at 10-15 per cent, as against the global average of 5 per cent. Currently, the bright yellow-coloured playthings are busy grounding the rest of the competition, having caught the imagination of young India.
According to the joint general secretary of the Toy Association of India, Rajiv Batra, manufacturers are churning out various kinds of toy bulldozers on a large scale, to meet the huge demand. “Earlier, the demand was for jeeps, cars, tractors, police vans, ambulances and trucks, but for the past few months, the demand for bulldozers has been rising,” claims Batra. He said that currently, toy bulldozers priced anywhere from Rs100 to Rs 3,000 are being manufactured in droves, ranging from simple, manual versions to remote-controlled ones and they come in small, medium and large sizes. In the coming days, demand is expected to increase.
According to Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) national president, B C Bhartia, the demand for toy bulldozers has suddenly burgeoned in toy markets across the country and manufacturers have geared up to meet this rapid demand.
“The way bulldozers were widely publicized on television news channels during the Uttar Pradesh elections, it has had a huge impact on younger kids and this is stoking the demand,” says Dilawar Gilani, wholesale toy dealer at Crawford Market, Mumbai. He said that the sale of remote and battery-operated toy bulldozers has increased by almost 30 per cent in the last couple of months.
The continuous use of bulldozers in various states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan, is spawning the craze for bulldozers in children. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been frequently called ‘Bulldozer Baba’ by SP leader Akhilesh Yadav, for the former’s claims of having razed the illegal properties of criminals with bulldozers.
The popularity of the bulldozer can be gauged from the fact that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during his visit to India last month, got behind the wheel of a bulldozer at a plant in Gujarat on April 21, with the pictures going viral in the country and abroad. “Chinese toys dominated the Indian market till recently but after the introduction of Aatamnirbhar Bharat and Make in India by the Prime Minister, now, a large number of toys are being made in India. It is the speciality of the small entrepreneurs of India that they start making efforts to meet the demand of any item that arises suddenly,” explained CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal. Toy manufacturers in India are mostly located in the NCR, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and clusters across central Indian states. The sector is fragmented, with 90 per cent of the market being unorganized and 8,366 toy industries registered with the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector.
