Skoda shall be tracing the footsteps of Suzuki and Hyundai. It shall be making India as its base for manufacturing small cars. Skoda Auto is a part of international VW group. It started its operations in India in 2001 and till now it has expanded its operations up to 41 dealerships well equipped with all the facilities of sales, servicing and spares.
It currently has set up its plant in Chakan near Pune and shall roll out its first Fabia next year. It also plans to increase its manufacturing capacity from current 50,000 units to 1 lakh units annually. Following the footsteps of Maruti and Hyundai, it shall also be exporting its small cars to neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, etc.
According to Thomas Kuehl of Skoda Auto India Pvt. Ltd., “India will be the key manufacturing facility with high local content. We have already doubled our sales targets to 25,000 units this year from 12,000 units in 2007, which will subsequently pave the way for local production. We expect the Aurangabad facility to form our local production base by 2010. We will be tapping the neighbouring markets to sell our excess production.”
