After motor city of Detroit, Pune in India emerges as new Motown
The car industry in the region around pune in state of Maharashtra is growing rapidly as manufacturers see the potential for the Indian market to overtake China.
Just a few years ago, village Chakan 30 km from pune looked like an empty plateau of farms and grazing land.
Now, more than 2,500 workers swarm over the 2.3 square km of this village.
By early 2009, the steel and concrete hangars rising from the scrub will have become a Volkswagen plant able to churn out more than 110,000 cars a years.
To the other side is another sprawling 4 sq km plot set to house a factory for the ultra low-cost car planned by Indian motorcycle giant Bajaj and France’s Renault.
And just 10 km away in Talegaon, general Motors is putting the finishing touches to a factory which will produce 120,000 cars a year.
The village Chakan near pune in now the centre piece of one of the world’s most rapidly industrializing regions.
People here say that it is going to be Detroit of India.
The 3 plants announced so far add up to investments of more than $5 billion.
Once they are up and running this part of Maharashtra alone will be making 1.8 million cars a year more than Britain.
And these are just the biggest international projects.
Next door to Bajaj and Renault, Daimler has an assembly plant for Mercedes.
Indian jeep maker Mahindra & Mahindra is $1 billion plant in the village.
The JCB of Britain has built a heavy machinery factory in Talegaon.
“We were not ready for this kind of boom” says Chetan patil the marketing manger for the Maharashtra Industrial.
Development Corporation (MIDC). “We lost 1,900 acres of land in two years to these car makers.”
The region will employ 25,000 people in car making in two years, he says.
That still leaves it far from the 129,000 workers employed by the car industry in Detroit the historic center of America corn manufacturing, down from 316,300 in 1999.
But it is catching up fast: Every one of the 112 plots MIDC has created here has already been bought and to buy 12,500 acres for further expansion.
Patil says he is in discussions with four or five other major international companies seeking land for new factories.
Bajaj produces here 1.3 million motorcycles every year.
And 35 of the company suppliers have set up factories in the area. Pune in well located between of Delhi Mumbai.
It also has around 500.000 students giving it a vest pool of Chennai.
Tamhane says the labor shortages that had started to happen in Chakan are now lessening as new engineering colleges open.
The cost of building a factory here be almost anywhere else in the world.
But huge savings are made on manpower workers on construction sites in India are paid about $2.60 a day.
As a result, major car makers are considering for exporters locked by the six lane Mumbai pune expressway to the Jawaharlal Nehru port, one of India’s largest and most efficient.
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