At the launch of Ford India’s latest product, the refresh of their popular sub-4 meter car the Aspire, Ford India Managing Director Anurag Mehrotra announced that Ford India had crossed the $1 billion mark in domestic revenues for 2017-18. However, Ford India is still an export oriented company and export revenues touched $2.4 billion in the same time period. One reason for the rise in revenues for the American car company according to Mehrotra was the large amount of localisation in Ford cars. “New products that we launch today have localisation levels of upwards of 85 per cent. That does not mean we compromise on quality because we just sent a large shipment of vehicles over to the United States”, he said.
Speaking to The Pioneer, Mehrotra admitted that consumer sentiment had been weak for a while and that higher fuel prices were not helping. “In some markets the situation has been a bit more subdued than others with demand persistently weak. While we hope the situation improves this festive season, we shall wait and watch”, Mehrotra said. Higher fuel prices have also been a dampener but he did not feel that they would sway sales one way or another.