India to emerge as leader in pickup truck segment by 2023

Chennai:

Pick-up trucks are replacing commercial vehicles in India and foreign players like Japanese automaker Isuzu Motors predict the country is expected to emerge as leader in the segment by 2023.

Launching the global range of India-made range of ‘D-Max’, one of the largest pickup trucks world-over, Takashi Kikuchi, managing director of Isuzu Motors, India and Shigeru Wakabayashi, deputy managing director, Isuzu Motors, India, said that currently Indian pick-up truck segment is one of the fastest growing segments in commercial vehicles accounting for 35 per cent of total commercial vehicle market.

“Currently, the market size in the one tone pickup segment in India is two lakh and we expect it to grow to eight lakh units and become the world’s largest pickup market,” said Kikuchi.

Predicting that India will be one of the top three economies of the world by 2023, Wakabayashi that pick-up truck market size will grow in India as there will be massive movement of goods.

Talking about the car plant in 107 acres of land in Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, he said the plant will commence commercial operations by early 2016 with the initial production capacity of 50,000 units per year.

“The operations will be scaled up to 1.2 lakh units per year with the accumulated investment of Rs 3,000 crore and is expected to generate 200 to 300 jobs,” Wakabayashi said.

Isuzu Motors India plans to achieve 100 per cent localization within three years of commencing production in 2016.

Interestingly, the Mahindra is the leader in the pickup segment in India followed by Tatas and Ashok Leyland. But Isuzu plans to become the leader in the segment.

“There is no global pickup truck in Indian market and D-Max is the first global pickup trucks launched in Tamil nadu,” he said.

Talking about Tamil Nadu, Kikuchi said that Tamil Nadu is an important market for Isuzu. “It is a progressive state in terms of industry growth, infrastructure development and a strong agricultural base. It offers a huge potential for pickup trucks and we look forward to meet the growing demand for world class pickup vehicles in the state,” he said.

Wakabayashi said that Isuzu started to sell imported D-max at Coimbatore from February last year to understand Indian customer’s needs. “During this one year, Isuzu received encouraging response from Tamil Nadu market. Now Isuzu has three outlets in Tamil Nadu – Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai and will one more outlets to meet customers needs in few years,” he added.

The D-Max single cab will be priced at an introductory launch price of Rs 5.99 lakh and DMax  space cab will be priced at Rs 6.19 lakh for the deck variant and rs 7.09 lakh for the arched deck variant respectively