Toyota draws up two-pronged strategy to boost sales

Kolkata: Japanese automobile major Toyota has drawn up a two-pronged strategy to boost sales figures of its Indian operations in a depressed market scenario, a company official said. "We have drawn up a two-pronged strategy. First is to increase the content of localisation, and second is to increase exports out of India," N Raja, director and Sr VP (sales and marketing) of Toyota Kirloskar Motors told reporters here.

Raja said that increasing the localisation content would help in cost reduction in a big way. He said that all the models produced in India have a minimum localisation content of around 50 per cent, the highest being for the Etios variants. Regarding exports, he said that the company was sending its products in the Asia Pacific countries and South Africa. "With the kind of products offered in India, it is not possible to look at the other export destinations like the Gulf since these nations have a appetite for big cars and SUVs," he said.

With Indian market being mostly compact cars and sedans, these products were accepted in the Asia-Pacific South African countries only. Last year, the company exported 28,000 units to these nations. "We are planning out strategies for increasing exports to these markets," he said. To a query, he said that there were no immediate plans for new product launches in India.

He said that although the company had not fixed any target sales this calendar year due to depressed market conditions in the first four months, maintaining last year's sales was minimum expectations, which might go up depending on the demand in balance seven months of the year. Last year, the company sold 1,47,000 units domestically, a de-growth over the previous period. Toyota launched the 11th version of Corolla Altis and the Etios Cross variant.