Ford India to start operations at Sanand by end 2014

Ford India is planning to start operations at its second facility in Sanand, Gujarat, by the end of 2014.

With the success of the its new urban SUV, the EcoSport, Ford India is now considering introducing more such vehicles to push ahead with the momentum.

Joginder Singh president and managing director, Ford India told DNA, that he company had learnt several lessons from the successes of the Ford Figo and the EcoSport.

He said the Indian consumer was not like a conventional western consumers, who bought a car as soon as they got a job and once they got a promotion they bought a bigger car.

However, he said the Indian consumer was becoming more aspirational. For instance, the B-segment was the key segment in the country, but within the segment people were becoming very aspirational for body style at a much earlier stage than the normal conventional consumer cycle.

He said EcoSport was a very good example of this, because three years ago the SUV segment was very small and no one would have projected the kind of growth that had been seen.

''We see that the aspiration for a new body type continuing in the future and we see the segment growing many fold.''

Singh told Business Standard in another interaction that India would be the third-largest market in the world after China and the US by 2020 and Ford wanted to be ready for a growing market.

Singh said to that end Ford was investing $2 billion in India over the next two years, including $1 billion for its second largest facility, at Sanand in Gujarat.

He said over 50 per cent of the work had been completed at Sanand and the plant would be operational by the end of 2014.

He added, with this the company would have a capacity to produce 440,000 cars and 610,000 engines annually.

He said Ford would expand its workforce by 5,000 more to the existing 11,700 across India in all its operations by the end of next year.