American car maker Ford ranks eighth in the growing Indian passenger vehicle (cars, vans and utility vehicles) market, with a three per cent share. That, however, has not prevented the company from emerging as the third biggest car manufacturer in the country ahead of companies like M&M and Tata Motors, thanks to export volumes.
Ford India produced a record 2,52,959 vehicles in FY17, helped by a 43 per cent surge in export volumes. By comparison, SUV major M&M, the third biggest domestic player which sells most of its vehicles in the domestic market, produced 2,42,721 passenger vehicles. Tata Motors, which occupied the fourth position in the domestic market last year, stood fifth in terms of production at 1,69,599 units.
Ford shipped more than 62 per cent of the products to export markets and accounted for 22 per cent of the 7,58,830 cars exported by India last year. The company is now the second biggest car exporter after Hyundai and could well emerge as the biggest this year.
Korean car maker Hyundai has remained the largest exporter for the past many years. But with a sharp growth in the last couple of years, Ford has managed to close the gap. In FY17, Hyundai exported 1,67,120 vehicles (growing just three per cent over the previous year) while Ford increased shipments by 43 per cent to 1,58,469 units. Ford exports EcoSport, Figo and Figo Aspire to markets such as Latin America, West Asia and Africa. The company did not respond to emailed queries on its further plans for export and domestic market.
The carmaker is focusing on export market to have a reasonable capacity utilisation and bring greater economies of scale. Both Hyundai and Maruti (the third largest exporter) are seeing a strong pull in the domestic market and have therefore accorded a greater priority to local demand.
Ford inaugurated its second Indian plant at Sanand in Gujarat in March 2015 with an annual capacity of 240,000 vehicles. The first plant at Chennai had a capacity of 200,000 vehicles. The company sold a total of 258,525 units (91,405 in domestic and 167,120 overseas) in the last financial year. The capacity utilisation for Ford is still less than sixty per cent and gives the car maker lot of headroom to expand exports and domestic sales.
Ford is among several multinational auto majors in India for whom exports now bring bigger volumes than local sales. Others in the list include Volkswagen, Nissan and General Motors.