Japan's Isuzu Motors plans to sell 50,000 pickup vehicles in India

Gurgaon: Japan's Isuzu Motors aims to sell 50,000 pickup vehicles in India in the next few years to gain market leadership, a top company executive has said. The company, which has a fully owned subsidiary in Chennai, has earmarked Rs 3,000 crore for a 120,000 units per year manufacturing facility close by.
"We have an ambitious plan for the Indian market with our range of globally renowned pickup trucks," Takashi Kikuchi, president and managing director of Isuzu Motors India Pvt Ltd, told ET, adding that the company has started assembling DMax pickups at Hindustan Motors' Chennai plant.
Pickup vehicles, popular in the West, are generally jeeps with rear payload carrying flat bodies. Of the 160,000 pickup vehicles sold in India every year, more than half are manufactured by Mahindra& Mahindra. The other two major Indian manufacturers are Tata Motors and Force Motor.
"We will crank up sales once our own facility in Sri City, in the southern part of Andhra Pradesh, gets on stream in 2016. We are aiming high sales with D-Max in the high-end segment, which is one of the largest selling pickup trucks in the world, to cater to the burgeoning Indian market for stylish and powerful pick-up vehicles with a high lifestyle quotient as owner driven vehicles," Kikuchi said.
According to Isuzu executives, the 1-1.2 tonne pickup segment in India is set to become the world's largest pickup vehicle market by 2023, with expected sales of over 800,000 units.
Isuzu, a relatively late entrant into the Indian pickup vehicle market, was supplying diesel engines to Hindustan Motors for its iconic Ambassador cars, production of which was stopped in April this year. The automaker, which started its India operations in 2012, is relying on its reputation for making tough and durable diesel engine vehicles to make a mark in the country.
"We have been one of the largest diesel engine manufacturers globally, which are high on quality and mileage. We plan to have edge over our competitors in India in the pickup vehicles segment, which is poised to grow exponentially," Kikuchi said.