Having sorted out its differences with employees’ union, albeit temporarily, the Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private Limited (TKM) is now aiming at regaining its market share through launch of upgraded versions of its existing models. The company aims to contribute a sizeable portion of the Indian passenger car market by 2025, by when it expects the market to touch 10 million units.
Towards achieving this goal, the company is considering options to launch a compact SUV, a luxury car Lexus among others in the coming days. It is also looking at increasing the localization significantly across its models.
“We see a lot of opportunities for us to increase our sales and add customers in India. We already have one million customers till now. The Indian passenger car market is expected to touch a 10 million units sales mark by 2020-25. Toyota aims to satisfy all its customers 100% by meeting their expectations,” said Naomi Ishii, Managing Director, TKM.
Toyota is working hard to attract Indian customers towards its products. It is now upgrading its products to meet the growing aspirations of customers in India. Towards this goal, the company has launched the upgraded version of Corolla Altis and Etios Cross, he said after launching the all new Corolla Altis, here on Monday.
“Presently, our products are not sold across the country including rural areas. We are looking at opportunities to increase our sales across the country. We are opening sales outlets in rural parts of the country. In the mid to long-term India opens up big opportunities for us to grow,” he said.
TKM registered 6% growth in sales in May by selling 13,230 units in compared to 12,502 units in May 2013.
Ishii said Toyota sees a lot of challenges in its endeavour to grow market share significantly. “There are challenges like energy, emission, environment and safety issues. Toyota’s wish is how to contribute to India in overcoming these challenges. We are working hard to meet these challenges,” he said.
However, he said, Toyota is not in a hurry to grow its sales. It wants to move gradually. It also plans to increase the localization significantly over the years as it thinks Indian suppliers and vendors are not ready to provide enough quality in a short time.
“Increasing localization means shifting job to India and cut down elsewhere. It is not so easy to do it overnight. We will gradually increase the local contents in our products, which is around 50%,” Ishii said.
On the possibility of launching premium car, Lexus in India, the luxury car model in India, he said the company actively studying opportunities to do so. “The premium car market size is around 40,000 units annually and the German carmakers are doing well here. We cannot enter the market with just one model. We have to have at least two or three models or produce it locally, which is not possible immediately. We have strong interest for Lexus in India and we are studying the opportunities,” Ishii added.
Leave a Reply