subject: Toyota's Small Car And Big Dreams Set For The Indian Market [print this page] Yoshinoru Noritake was staring at a road in Bangalore that is known for being a place filled occasionally with dog-piss, noxious fumes and also one of the hottest and grimiest places. The sight seems forbidding for many. Now that he is the chief enginer of Toyota's passenger vehicles division, and yet he still tugs uncomfortably at his custom made suit. Perhaps the Peace Boulevard of Hiroshima is just a distant dream from some other time but then he positioned himself, with the precision characteristic of Toyota, at the great Indian icon of democracy- the traffic signal.
Amidst the chaos, the big guy from the Japanese company could see monstrous truchs hold the court with faux SUVs air-kiss the real McCoys, quaint auto-rickshaws, taxis in the middle of a mutiny, government buses enforce the iron hand of the state and small cars organizing a mobocracy, pushcarts, handcarts and cyclists seemed desperate to secede. But then again no one really cared about this.
There are a couple of things that he considered weird, instances that made him ponder. The more that he thought of all of these things that he is observing about the Indians attitude on the road, about parking and driving and even the lifespan of Indian cars, he realized all the more that a coleague, Kazuo Okamoto, had been so sharp about a small car in one of their meetings in Tokyo some time four years ago.
Everyone knew him as the man behind Toyota's best car ever- the Corolla. In 2005, everyone was envious of how well the Chinese market has been going and India's domestic consumption is a headline. The emergence of BRIC was both an exciting and disturbing to him. He found it exciting because this seems a good way to start a fresh play and disturbing because Toyota is a non-entity in these places especially in India.
The idea of setting up the small car seemed an impossible thing especially that the company did not have anything close to it in its portfolio. He also knew that the company had a problem with emerging economies while rivals are eating up the place that they should be taking. However, Katsuaki Watanabe, then the president of Toyota Motors Company and sent him out to Bangalore to start with the entry family size car that they are to set up for the Indian market.
Now, the car is called the Toyota Etios and it is ready for the Indian market, taking a roll on the first of December. Toyota believes that its engineers were able to build a Corolla that will see the company for the rest of this century especially in emerging markets all over the world.
