Bullish on the Indian market, Netherlands-based fleet management company LeasePlan Corporation plans to spend Rs 2,400 crore to increase fleet size five-fold to 50,000 vehicles by 2012."The Indian market is growing and more and more corporates are opting to lease fleets than buying cars. To support this growth, we plan to increase our fleet strength from 10,000 vehicles to 50,000 vehicles over the next six years," Veerle Behets, MD of LeasePlan India, said here.LeasePlan India is a joint venture between LeasePlan Corporation (51%) and UK Paints (49%) and has been in India since 1999. German car giant Volkswagen holds the majority 50 per cent stake in LeasePlan Corporation, which manages a fleet size of 1.3 million cars with over 75,000 clients across countries.Behets said funds for fleet expansion would be arranged primarily through bank loans.LeasePlan provides end-to-end fleet solutions and has over 500 corporate clients in India that include the Tatas, Coca Cola, Whirlpool, Novartis, Nicholas Piramal, Godrej and Philips.Behets said fleet leasing market in India was expanding as more and more corporates preferred to hire cars than buy them, which proved to be expensive. "Our studies and experience has shown that hiring of fleet, where corporates contract our cars for around 3-4 years, is a beneficial proposition for them as they do not need to block funds and need not worry on aspects like maintenance, etc," Behets said.
