Auto India, Car India

Welcome back!

It has been decided that both Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and General Motor’s India arm is going to develop vendor base. GM, General Motors India. US-based auto Company is planning to synergize operations with SAIC, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, Chinese partner to get the advantages and carry on the operations valuably and gainfully in world’s most leading and fast growing automobile markets. The Alliance is planning to develop a vendor base in India for supplying components to manufacturing units in China. The consideration of cross-shipping of vehicles is also made later.

“There are opportunities to synergize our operations further. The vehicles we are developing in collaboration with SAIC will have high localization levels. There is no reason why we can’t share suppliers and do cross-shipping of vehicles,” said Karl Slym, president and managing director, GM India.

General Motors Company has almost 440 suppliers in only India. Out of 440 suppliers, nearly 200 vendors have been known for supplying components for global operations of General Motors. According to Slym, General Motors Company has signed with a few new suppliers that would start providing components to China till the end of the present year or early in next year.

P Balendran, vice-president and director (corporate affairs), GM India, said, “At present, we source components valued at around $500 million for our overseas operations. This is likely to go up considerably over the next two years.” The company is going to provide components worth $1 billion by the end of the upcoming financial year.

GM, General Motors Company has the goal of making sales to almost 300,000 units by the year 2013 in India is also going to launch more 5 new vehicles in connection with SAIC in next eighteen months. The 5 more vehicles will be launched by GM include a sedan, a hatchback, two light commercial vehicles and a sports-utility vehicle. In the month of January 2012, first two series will be launched during Auto Expo in Delhi.  Two production plants are available of the car maker such as at Halol in Gujarat and Talegaon in Maharashtra. Halol plant can roll out almost 85,000 units for every annum whereas Talegaon plant has the capacity to manufacture almost 140,000 vehicles. The investment of $250 million has been made by the company for increasing the capacity to almost 110,000 units at the Halol plant by the end of the present year.

General Motors that has an agreement with SAIC to run several operation in the rising markets in Asia currently operating almost 8 more joint ventures in China too. It has even formed an investment company for the expansion called General Motors SAIC Investment Ltd. General Motor ranks at the 5^th position in big automobile manufacturers in the country. The company has registered a growth rate of 23% for making sale of 107,216 vehicles in the Indian automobile market.