Ford has released their massive expansion plans, explaining their targets at becoming one of the top manufacturers in India as well as other countries from the South East Asia region. Ford declared that total of eight cars will be launched and a total of 500 service centres will be opened by year 2015. This is not something new and was already disclosed by Ford last year.
An average seller in India, none of the cars from this great American Company has had great sales until the launch of the Ford Figo, which was the ‘gamechanger’ as the new President of Ford India, Mr. Jogindar Singh, called it. Figo was the first of the target 8 launches for India which has certainly delivered well. They have similar expectations from their next major launch that is the EcoSport to be launched in 2013. As the compact SUV market in India is hotting up, Ford expects tremendous sales from this sub 4-metre SUV. Also they will launch new products, mostly in the small car segment to complete their line of eight new cars by 2015.
The main problem Ford faced in India was the lack of strong after sales and service support for their cars. The new president of Ford India aims to rectify that by introducing many new ‘Touch Points’. They aim at 250 outlets by end of 2013 and as many as 500 outlets by end of 2015. Many of these service centres will be in tier II and III locations and lot of sales are expected from these towns.
Ford is also starting a new factory in Tamil Nadu next year along with expansion of current plants and also their suppliers. This will feed the fuel to their massive expansion plans which will help them with the growth sales that they have set as targets. Even currently Ford has acceptable growth rate coming from domestic demand as well as healthy export of their cars from India. Last year they sold 96,270 units in the domestic market and exported 22,000 units. Till October 2012 they already had sold 75,150 units in India and exported 21,900 units.
