 CHENNAI: After entering India in 1996 and investing nearly $1 billion, the world's largest car maker by volume General Motors' Indian arm has barely managed a 3% market share. The company now says it is ready for the big battle with plans to at least double market share in the next three years. "We experimented a bit, but now all our plans are fully geared up. India is a very important and critical market for us," director of sales at General Motors, Vikas Jain said. The company entered the Indian market with its elitist Opel range and then decided to drive it away to bring in a more mass market Chevrolet range. He said GM has quietly put in place a f ully integrated set up. For instance a flexible manufacturing system (FMS as GM officials call it) of which makes both petrol and diesel engines, is ready, two plants -- one each in Talegaon and Halol and a 2,500 seater R&D Centre in Bangalore which caters not just to GM India but does design work for GM's global operations as well, are all on battle ready mode. "We do not play in any market for the short term. We look at any market for the long term. We are now ready for the real battle," Jain said."We have launched 3 vehicles in 6 months (the third-- a multi-purpose vehicle -- was launched in Chennai on Monday). All of which are doing well, between the two Sail models, we have sold nearly 15,000 vehicles since February and have bookings for another 3,000 vehicles," Jain detailed. The company which sold 92,000 units in the calendar year 2012, hopes to "beat last years" sales numbers very easily, Jain said, pointing out that the car sales in India fell for the sixth month on the trot in April. For the first time in a decade, car sales fell 7% in 2012-13. Among the visible trends, Jain said car buyers were looking at buying petrol driven cars as opposed to diesel. "The pump price gap between petrol and diesel has narrowed down substantially from nearly Rs 26 a litre to Rs 13 a litre. Delhi and Mumbai markets are witness ing petrol vehicle buying and in other centres too we are witnessing more enquiries for petrol. In fact, in some markets, we have a waiting period for our Chevrolet Beat (a compact car)," Jain added.  via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNEEYYJ3dxUD1xcPOp36iJqC9epaXA&url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/GM-gets-battle-ready-to-double-market-share/articleshow/20056664.cms | |||
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