Sandesh Prabhudesai
21 August 2000
With a steady annual growth of 10 to 15 per cent, the car market would flourish further in a developing country like India, opines Philip G Spender, the managing director of Ford India Ltd.
He was in Goa to open a new showroom of Caculo Ford today while promoting its latest sensation – the Ford Ikon 'josh'. It was inaugurated by chief minister Francisco Sardinha, in the presence of state power minister Digambar Kamat.
Though he is very secretive of future plans of Ford in India, Philip discloses that the Ford India Ltd is also planning to enter the IT sector shortly, with a huge investment. "India has lot of potential for it and want to exploit it", he states.
While declining to elaborate, Philip however admits that the Chennai plant of Ford India Ltd would also manufacture midsize cars for export purpose in the Asian region.
As the GDP growth of the car industry is presently five per cent compared to 10 per cent in Britain and 17 per cent in the USA, Philip also feels that the Indian government should strive for increasing the GDP in the automobile sector.
Though Philip is also very critical of the bad condition of roads in India, he feels it has lot of scope for improving which could ultimately help the car industry grow in the country. "But Ford would click because we have minutely studied the road condition before designing our cars", he claims.
The Ford car, which according to him holds one seventh of the midsize car market in the country today, has taken all the aspects like high humidity, extreme cold and even things like frequently honking culture while designing the cars.
When asked whether the country like India would have great market for midsize when small cars are becoming more popular, Philip prefers to leave it to the customers rather than making tall claims in this regard.
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