Toyota considering an automobile plant in North India

Toyota considering an automobile plant in North India

Toyota Kirloskar Motor, the makers of highly successful models in the Indian market like the Qualis, Camry and of course, the famous Toyota Corolla is now considering opening up a manufacturing unit in the northern India. They just recently launched their new MUV Toyota Innova, which replaced the very successful Toyota Qualis. And the company’s plant in Bidadi near Bangalore with the capacity of producing 60,000 cars a year is running at full capacity.

Interestingly, in spite of the increased pricing of the Toyota Innova compared to the Toyota Qualis, the demand is still very high and the car is available with a waiting period. This has made Toyota think about increasing their production capacity. There is also lure of skilled and manageable labor, tax sops offered by some northern states like Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh. And northern India happens to be one of the biggest consumers of passenger vehicles.

The company is also considering entering the volume segment of the automobile sector by perhaps launching a smaller car from their subsidiary Daihatsu which specializes in making such cars. However, the analyst does not actually consider the budget segment to be equivalent to the compact car category. The company is also targeting to get a 10% market share in the Indian market in the years to come. Currently, they control just around 5% market share.

Uttaranchal seems to be one of the possibilities for Toyota to consider for their plant in the Northern India. Uttaranchal’s Chief Minister ND Tiwari in fact visited the company’s plant near Bangalore last month and invited the company to consider their state for an additional plant. It would give this state a huge boost of Toyota indeed agrees to do so…