Ford to invest Rs 1,264 crore on product development centre

American automobile giant Ford, in a bid to fortify India into a more serious participant in its global roadmap, is investing $195 million (around Rs 1,264 crore) towards setting up of a product development centre in Chennai.

The Global Technology and Business Centre will serve as a hub for product development, mobility solutions, and business services for India and markets around the world. It will be the ninth centre of its kind in the world, and would be hiring around 3,000 engineers initially, and scaling that up overtime.

"The centre will primarily work around development and creation of new product design. Currently, the base product design is done in other centres around the globe. Going forward, the India centre will work along with global peers on various projects," Ford India Executive Director (Marketing, Sales, and Service) Vinay Raina told DH.

Ever since setting foot in India in 1995, Ford has made investments to the tune of $2 billion. Its two factories in Chennai and Sanand (Gujarat), have a total annual capacity of 4,40,000 units between them.

"The Sanand facility makes the Ford Aspire and Figo, which also get exported to over 50 countries. The Chennai plant manufactures the EcoSport and Endeavour, from where the EcoSport is exported. All this is aligned to Make in India," Raina said, adding that the Mustang is imported from the US as a CBU.

Ford claims to be the biggest car exporter from India, having exported 1,51,638 units in 2016. Domestic sales stood at 86,460 units last year, to which Bengaluru contributed 8%.

"We continue to believe that India is the right place for growth. Even the new development centre shows how important India stands in the portfolio for Ford, one in terms of investments, and also where future growth opportunities will arise," Raina said.

Currently, Ford has 376 dealerships across 209 towns and it is looking at expanding into Tier-IV and Tier-V towns, he added.