Toyota Kirloskar Motors, the Indian subsidiary of the Japanese auto giant Toyota, is planning to step up its production schedule of Qualis to avoid missing its annual sales target of 35,000 units in 2001.
The possibility comes despite Toyota being the clear market leader in India in the utility vehicles segment. It also achieved a 51 per cent increase in sales during the first seven months of the current calendar year.
The company, with sales of its multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) totalling 16,646 units during January-July of 2001 against 11,017 units during the same period last year (SIAM figures), needs to sell close to 3,700 units for the remaining five months of the current year to achieve the target. This is higher than Toyota's installed capacity of 3,400 units per month.
Sandeep Singh, general manager (marketing) of Toyota Kirloskar expressed confidence in achieving the target and said that whereas the company now takes 7.5 minutes to produce a Qualis, the production time would now be slashed to 7 minutes to achieve the sales target.
Auto analysts at leading foreign brokerages said that though sales could pick up in September, particularly institutional sales to avail of depreciation benefits, sales growth was likely to peter out in the October-December quarter.
Nonetheless, the company's focus on semi-urban and rural markets has paid off as its market share has increased to 21.43 per cent by July 2001 in the multi-utility vehicle segment against 14.18 per cent last year (as per SIAM figures).
Singh said the company has a 38 per cent share in the MPV segment, of which 15 per cent is contributed by sales in rural and semi-urban markets. Toyota, which had launched the Qualis in India with around 24 dealerships in urban centres, has in recent times been positioning the vehicle as a people carrier in smaller cities.
The company is planning to increase its dealerships to 42 by the year-end, most of which will come up in smaller towns and cities, in addition to adding 30 more service centres. Further, the company is planning to increase its sales in the north-east, which at present accounts for only 3 per cent of its sales.
According to industry experts, the north-eastern states, because of lack of proper roads, is a relatively big market for utility vehicles.
