NEW DELHI, Dec 16 (Reuters) - General Motors Corp , the world's biggest automaker, introduced a new model of its Chevrolet Optra sedan in India on Tuesday and said boosting its presence in India was key to maintaining its global leadership.
"The Asia-Pacific region is home to five of the world's eight fastest growing markets. India is No. 2 on that list," Jay Cooney, director of media relations at GM Asia Pacific, told a launch news conference.
"As a company, GM knows that to be successful and to maintain global leadership, we need a substantial presence in India." General Motors, through its wholly owned unit, has been in India since the mid-1990s and produces several variants of the German-engineered Opel Astra, Corsa, Swing and Sail models at its plant in the western state of Gujarat.
But its bigger, expensive models struggle to compete in the Indian market, where 78 percent of the cars are small, low-price hatchbacks. In April-November, the first eight months of this fiscal year, it had only a 2.5 percent domestic market share.
But in the mid-size and premium car segment, where most of its models are positioned, it had a nearly nine percent share. To boost that further, GM introduced a string of new models in 2003. The new Optra variant is the fifth.
The new variant, powered by a 1.6 litre petrol engine to add to its existing 1.8-litre model, is aimed at the upper end of the mid-size car segment where it will compete with the Honda City, Suzuki's Baleno and Mitsubishi's Lancer.
Its base version has a showroom price of 729,000 rupees ($16,011) in Delhi and the top end version has a tag of 789,000 rupees.
India's domestic car sales surged 25.9 percent in April-November to 433,840 units, with sales of mid-size and premium cars rising 57 percent to 93,806. GM's sales doubled to 10,844 units.
Company officials said they expected industry car sales to rise 11 percent every year until 2008 with an increasing number of buyers' upgrading to bigger cars helped by lower interest rates and tax breaks.
GM said it expects Optra sales to increase by a third with the introduction of the new variant of about 800 units a month. ($1 = 45.53 rupees)