GM India creates new arm for marketing, sales and distribution

Mumbai: General Motors India, the Indian arm of US auto giant General Motors Corporation has announced the creation of a sales and distribution company called General Motors (India) Marketing Private Limited.

GM India manufactures and markets cars under the Chevrolet brand in India, and as part of the restructuring and realignment of its  corporate structure is transferring its sales, marketing and distribution activities to the new entity. All manufacturing activities will remain with General Motors (India) Private Limited.

Talking about the realignment, P Balendran, vice president of GM India  said, ''The new company, General Motors (India) Marketing Private Limited will be operational  soon. With GM's  operations in India expanding significantly in size and scale, it has become necessary to bring greater focus and efficiency to selling and distributing our world-class products and services. This move will help us improve planning, inventory management, transport management, timely delivery and thus, maximize cost synergies.''

The formation of the new marketing, sales and distribution company comes close on the heels of GM India commencing production at its state-of-the-art greenfield plant at Talegaon in Maharashtra, on 2nd September, 2008. Given the higher volume of vehicles that would be rolling off the assembly line, a dedicated company to look after sales, marketing and distribution is not surprising.

The company manufactures the Chevrolet Tavera, Chevrolet Optra, Chevrolet Aveo, Chevrolet Aveo U-VA, Chevrolet SRV, Chevrolet Spark and Chevrolet Captiva for the Indian market, at two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, one at Halol in Gujarat and the second at Talegaon in Maharashtra. 

The restructuring exercise is expected to yield significant cost efficiencies for GM India, and will involve the transfer of some employees presently engaged in sales, marketing and distribution activities to the new company.

''General Motors (India) Marketing Private Limited will also help us to unlock value in the near future which, in turn, will seek to optimize effectiveness and maximize efficiency of the company,'' added Balendran.

GM India's is also going full-ahead with its network expansion. The company has a 122 sales points and 129 service outlets operational across the country, and is looking to widen its customer reach by ramping up these numbers to 145 sales points and 160 service outlets by the end of 2008.