Japanese car giant Toyota said that the waiting period of Etios sedan will go down from the current figure of two months to less than a month, in a fortnight.

The company will launch sedan Etios' hatchback version the Liva on June 27.

“We have been delaying the launch of much-anticipated small car Liva, so as to first satisfy the market demand for the Etios sedan, which has been a hit,” said Mr Hiroshi Nakagawa, Managing Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), at the launch of new variant of Corolla Altis. TKM hopes to sell 60,000 units of its sedan Etios and the Liva in 2011.

New target

The company is scaling up production in all its plant by investing Rs 300 crore in India operations by the middle of next year. It is expected to sell 2.1 lakh units next year.

“Earlier we had set a target of 1,50,000 units for this year. But now that has been reduced to 1,40,000 units due to the one month production cut following the tsunami in Japan,” the TKM Deputy Managing Director (Marketing), Mr Sandeep Singh, told reporters here.

Toyota is to embark on an aggressive localisation strategy across verticals. Mr Singh said, “70 per cent of the Etios is localised and we want to increase this number to 90 per cent within two years.”

“This month Etios sales will overtake that of the Innova. We are focussing on mass-volume market. At present capturing market share is not our prime target. We are looking at satisfying our customers first,” he added.