GM India Freezes its New Product Development Budget

American car company, General Motors is struggling with slow business in India. To cope with this challenge, the company has decided to put a hold on its new product development budget for the Indian market. General Motors will be fully reviewing its future product portfolio before moving in any direction.

Interestingly in 2015, the company had announced its plans of investing $1 Billion to expand the manufacturing operations and launch 10 new Made-in-India products. All these plans are now put on hold as the company does some introspection.

A company representative said, “Given the shift in customer preferences in India, we are conducting a full review of our future product portfolio and have put on hold future investment in our all-new vehicle family for the market until we firm up our product portfolio plan.”

He added: “If GM is going to make significant investments, we need to be certain that they will generate significant shareholder value, and Moving forward, our priority remains to establish the right business conditions for sustainable profitability.”

While announcing the $1Billion investment plans, CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra said that the company will grow its business in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and Mexico by introducing a new family of cars based on Global Emerging Markets (GEM) platform. Presently, the GM (Chevrolet) line-up in India include Cruze, Beat, Enjoy MPV, Tavera, Sail, Spark and Trailblazer SUV.

A few days back it was also reported that GM India is selling its Halol plant in Gujarat to China’s SAIC Motor Corporation and consolidate the manufacturing operations at the Talegaon Plant. The company has witness huge potential in exports markets as the export volume tripled in 2016 compared to 2015. Around 69,390 Beat hatchbacks were shipped to Central and South America. This is the main reason that the company were able to cut their losses to Rs 1,003.39 crore in Financial year-2015. In FY-2014, the company lost Rs 3,812.46 crore.

Now, the company will cut their expenses and focus on “sustainable profitability”. Can they do it without launching any new products in near future? Only time will tell.

Also See: Chevrolet Offering Benefits up to Rs 2.45 lakh

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Siddharth Sharma

Siddharth has always been passionate about Cars and Bikes. He was the kind of kid that always had the latest Auto magazine in his school bag. He had this dream- to become a professional racecar driver. Finally, in 2012 he found himself racing as a rookie driver in the Polo R Cup national racing championship. Over time he had to readjust the sail and get into automotive journalism to continue enjoying machines on wheels.

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