India geared to be manufacturing hub of Asia

09 January 2007

India is set to make better quality cars. That's because many carmakers have more than doubled their R&D spends and personnel over the past few years. CNBC-TV18 has more.

In-house developed new generation engines. High-end embedded systems. Computer Aided Engineering. Indian carmakers are pulling out the stops to offer globally competitive products. Maruti almost trebled its R&D staff to 270 from 100 and added two divisions in four years.

Jagdish Khattar, MD, Maruti Udyog says, "Suzuki has indicated that Maruti has to play a much bigger role in the R&D area."

General Motors has similar plans. In 2003 it invested $21 million in a Technical Centre in Bangalore with 200 engineers.

Today it has 600 engineers and 100 scientists on its R&D team in India, the Asia-Pacific and the parent company.

Rajeev Chaba, president and CEO of GM India, says, "We are moving up the value chain pretty fast and we have started participating in design, styling and manufacturing engineering."