It was a year ago when Nissan Motors, a Japanese car maker Motors entered India looking for a strong vendor base. Looks like they knew that over the years, the Indian automobile giants, like Maruti Udyog, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bajaj Automobile and Tata Motors, had developed a strong vendor base, which could benefit all new OEMs entering India.
To prepare themselves for the foreign auto players entering, Indian vendors, who by now have acquired the trade tricks, have either taken over the acquired component companies abroad or signed up joint ventures with the well established international players.
The Indian vendors, who have an impressive customer list in their kitty, claim that they have reached the present stage, courtesy the international automobile biggies.
With the investment of Rs 4,500-crore in Chennai, the Nissan Motors-Renault 50:50 JV is definitely big news. The joint venture will be also clubbed with Bajaj will be also working on the small-cheap car for India, which would be a direct competitor to Tata's Nano.
Nissan Motors has also witnessed a growth of 216% in India within just four years of its presence. In 2005, the company sold 160 units, 250 units in 2006 and 506 units in 2007. Out of 506 units, 330 were of the Teana luxury sedan model and the rest were of the SUV model X-Trail. The first product of Nissan Motors that was rolled to the Indian market was the Nissan X-Trail - in the year 2004 and Teana in 2007. The company expects to bring out eight new models of Nissan by 2012.
