\nTowards 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.
\n\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Naomi Ishii, Managing Director, TKM.
\nToyota 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.
\n\u201cPresently, 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,\u201d he said.
\nTKM registered 6% growth in sales in May by selling 13,230 units in compared to 12,502 units in May 2013.
\nIshii said Toyota sees a lot of challenges in its endeavour to grow market share significantly. \u201cThere are challenges like energy, emission, environment and safety issues. Toyota\u2019s wish is how to contribute to India in overcoming these challenges. We are working hard to meet these challenges,\u201d he said.
\nHowever, 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.
\n\u201cIncreasing 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%,\u201d Ishii said.
\nOn 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. \u201cThe 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,\u201d Ishii added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"