New market hunt by Maruti, Hyundai

Maruti and Hyundai, the leading auto makers of the country, are hunting for new export markets to make up the loss incurred by currency fluctuation (euro) and withdrawal of key incentives by European countries.

Both the auto makers registered huge looses due to the above mentioned factors in the current year. Maruti experienced fall in export target to Euro zone, 80 per cent of overseas income comes through this zone, by 5 per cent to 1.4 lakh units for the year ending March 2011 as against the previous year while Hyundai's experience remained the same, as the company lost 2.3 per cent of export volumes in May, 2010 compared to the corresponding period.

The losses made the companies to search for new destinations. Hyundai, Director, Marketing and sales, Arvind Saxena told that the company is looking forward to Australia, South Africa, West Asia and Vietnam as potential market places;however, they are not as good as Euro zone if compare. On the other hand, Maruti is mulling over to consider Brunei, Taiwan, Algeria, Hong Kong, and Chile and South Africa. Apart from that the company is planning to deal more in dollar that has been more stable than euro in the last one year.

It is to be noted that car exports increased 33 per cent to 4.46 lakh units in the end of FY 2010. Whereas the exports growth in first two months of the current fiscal was 20 per cent year-on-year.