Nissan Motors, the Japanese carmaker has zeroed on India as an attractive and cost-effective sourcing point. Nissan Motors is increasing its business strategies in India for sourcing, hiring or identifying production bases.

The company’s upcoming plant near Chennai is being perceived as the hub for sourcing spares for its operations in other parts of the world. As the cost of manpower is low in India, Nissan is looking at the prospect of sourcing spare parts for its non-compact cars from the subcontinent. In fact, the car manufacturer is also planning to obtain car parts from other locations in India and Chennai will be the cardinal point, where special packing and other value-engineering aspects would be taken care of.

About 90% of the cars produced at the new facility near Chennai would have original content. Nissan has already signed up with 94 Indian vendors for this project. These vendors are likely to take up positions at the Greenfield plant, which will have the capability to produce cars on three platforms such as A segment cars, B segment cars and light commercial vehicles.

Nissan Motor India has already received orders from its European counterparts. This carmaker has also received stupendous response on the hiring front and about 300 employees are being recruited and trained at its overseas plant locations.
It is hoped that Nissan will be able to manage the exchange rate fluctuations better by investing in low-cost country. Nissan Motors is also investing to source products from Thailand and China.

It is expected that around ten Lakh small cars will be churned out from Nissan’s manufacturing plant in India by 2012.