Japanese cars are popular all over the world, however, they Japanese auto makers were very late in entering the Indian car market. Suzuki was the first Japanese car maker to enter India in 1983, when the Indian Government relaxed entry of foreign car makers. Toyota, the world’s largest car maker tied up with Kirloskar Group to form Toyota Kiroskar Motors 10 years ago; however, only recently they launched few car models like Innova, Corolla, Qualis and Fortrunner, Toyota Corolla Altis in India. In spite of late entry of Toyota in Indian car market, Toyota car models have become very popular in India in a short time.
Toyota Motors, the Japanese automaker is now focusing on the small car market in India. Toyota has their next plan of introducing small 600 cc cars in India in the beginning of 2011. Toyota expects to raise its market share by capturing the small car market in India, with a forecast of 5 % of its global sales coming from India.
Toyota plans to produce this small car at a new plant which they plan to build in Bangalore, which will have a .manufacturing capacity of 100,000 unit per year. The company will make India a center for its small cars for which they will source 75 % of its components locally. They plan to launch both diesel and petrol versions of small cars powered by a 1.2 and a 1.3 liter engine. The future plan of company is to export the car to neighboring countries.
The existing Toyota plant at Bangalore has an annual installed capacity of 80,000 units and employs about 4,200 people. Toyota plans to hire 2,000 more employees for their new plant in Bangalore, India, so as to gear up their production to be able to launch their small car by start of 2011. The installed capacity of this new plant would around 70,000 units per annum initially and Toyota has plans to expand it up to 200,000 units per year later. Toyota expects to build its presence in India through this small car.
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