Maruti's in-house designed car to roll out by 2011-12

Jagdish Khattar, Managing Director of Maruti Udyog has said the company could roll out its first care designed completely inhouse by 2011-12.

The company also said its new small car, a one litre petrol vehicle, to be exported in big numbers to the European markets, would be launched by next year.

"We train a number of R&D engineers in Japan and we might even roll out our first completely inhouse designed car by the year 2011-12," Said Khattar.

The company's present automobile designs are worked upon in collaboration with Suzuki which has seen cars like the 800, Esteem, Zen and WagonR among others being modified to suit the Indian conditions.

The company has an export target of around 52,000 cars for this fiscal year where it will target Sri Lanka, Algeria, Chile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia among others.

Maruti presently exports only small cars like the 800, Alto, Zen Estilo to most countries. However, to Nepal and Sri Lanka, it exports the Esteem and Omni.

Exports have become a major part of the company's plans as it has just recorded a 65 per cent growth in exports to non-European countries. Two years ago, the export figures were close to 18,000 units.

On the plans to export cars from Gujarat, Khattar admitted that while the company was in talks with the Adani Group to export its small cars through the Mundra Port, he was also in dialogue with several other ports.

Khattar was in Vadodara to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Gujarat government wherein the 'Gujarat Regional Automobile Training Institute (Gujrati) would be set up at a cost of Rs 16 crore fully funded by the Tribal Development Department, Government of Gujarat.

The institute will be set up in Waghodia taluk of Vadodara district for imparting driving and technical training in automobiles to scheduled tribe (ST) youth. Maruti has agreed to hire upto 60 per cent of the technical trainees passing out from the institute.

The company plans to add 25 such schools in the coming years after several state governments including Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal approached them for the same.