Toyota Kirloskar expects strong sales to continue until the first quarter of next year. Executive Sabari Manohar said, "This quarter is going to be really good because of the festive and momentum." The company also plans to increase production capacity at its Bidadi plants to help reduce long waiting periods.
Tadashi Asazuma (left), Deputy Managing Director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, at the launch on Wednesday
The festive season in the current quarter and the next quarter will continue to draw sales, as demand from both urban and rural markets continue to draw footfalls at the showrooms, said a senior executive at Toyota Kirloskar Motor on Wednesday.
"This quarter is going to be really good because of the festive and momentum what we have, and then we are carefully monitoring any other impact that is happening because of the global unrest. We also feel the first-quarter of the next year also should be positive," Sabari Manohar, Executive Vice President, Sales-Service-Used Car Business, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), told businessline on the sidelines of a new Glanza launch here.
He said it was difficult to say whether the growth would be in a single or double-digits, but the aim was to make more and more customers experience the Toyota brand.
Manohar also said that TKM would ramp up its production capacity at Bidadi in Karnataka from early next year to reduce waiting period for certain models and also for newer products. It has two plants in Bidadi, with an annual production capacity of 3.42 lakh units.
The additional capacity, which was expected to come up this year, will be at an upcoming third plant in Bidadi. It will have an annual capacity of one-lakh units for different models, including Innova HyCross.
Toyota is also setting up a new plant in Bidkin Industrial Area, Maharashtra that will also have a capacity of another one-lakh units per annum, and is expected to come up by the first half of 2029.
The company has registered domestic wholesales (dispatches to dealers) growth of 9 per cent year-on-year during January-September this year to 2,69,619 units, as compared with 2,47,081 units in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, TKM on Wednesday launched the facelift version of Glanza starting at Rs.7 lakh (ex-showroom). It is powered by a New-Gen 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder Z12E petrol engine delivering 61 kW of power and 112.4 Nm of torque, and CNG powertrain delivering 51.3 kW of power and 101.8 Nm of torque, alongside the introduction of automated manual transmission (AMT) in CNG variants.
The company said it would deliver enhanced fuel efficiency of 23.80 km/litre for the manual transmission (MT) variant and 24.77 km/litre for the AMT variant.