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Isuzu Motors India has plans to source components from India and is working with vendors who are supplying parts for its India operations to enable this in the future.
“There is a huge potential for local sourcing, and those who supply us with parts here are candidates for supply to our worldwide operations,” said Shigeru Wakabayashi, Deputy Managing Director, Isuzu India.
Pick-up truck rollout Speaking about the Isuzu facility that is under construction at Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, Wakabayashi said that the commercial production of the pick-up truck was expected to begin here in April 2016.
“We will touch 70 per cent localisation at the start of production,” he said, adding that even engine assembly will be locally done by vendors. Amongst the components that will continue to be imported are nuts and bolts that will not achieve scale of operations for local manufacture.
Manufacturing hub Isuzu is investing ₹3,000 crore in the facility that will have an installed capacity of 50,000 units per annum initially and will touch 120,000 units at full capacity.
“It will be a manufacturing hub for emerging markets,” Wakabayashi said, adding that production of the SUV, however, will continue to be at the Hindustan Motors’ plant in Chennai.
The pick-up market in India, currently at 2 lakh units per annum, is growing rapidly and expected to touch eight lakh units in 2023. “It was earlier around 30 per cent of the LCV market. Now, it is bigger than the Tata Ace,” he said.
Sales, service centre Earlier, the company announced the opening of Viraaj Isuzu, its first sales, service and spares centre in the city.
This is the Japanese automaker’s third dealership in the State and the 27th across the country.
It plans to increase the number to 60 by April 2016 and by 2018, expects to have 180-200 dealerships across India.
In the Indian market, Isuzu currently has two offerings — one each in the pick-up (variants of the D-Max) and premium SUV (MU-7) segments.
These are priced between ₹6.09 lakh and ₹7.74 lakh for the pick-up and ₹21.27-23.77 lakh for the SUV, (ex-showroom) in Maharashtra. Isuzu has also tied up with DC Design for two customisation packages for the SUV from three centres — Mumbai, Delhi and Pune.
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