The ascendency of India as an economic world power

India is surely the next big market for car makers. So, I am not surprised that BMW has opened an assembly plant in India. You know that BMW cars are not cheap cars but India has enough rich people to buy them. May be but Indians are fan of inexpensive cars and most of the cars sold in Indian market are inexpensive cars. So, I would like observe the progress of BMW’s assembly plan in India in the next few years.

Guardian reported:

India's market is slated to be the seventh-biggest by 2015 with sales of between 2.5m and 3m annually. India's auto market has been growing at 14% a year while GDP is forecast to rise between 8% and 10% a year until the middle of the next decade.

But BMW has good reason to be cautious about how many cars it will make because 97% of the Indian car market is for cheaper vehicles.

Local manufacturers, such as Tata and Rajav, are competing with overseas rivals to build low-cost models for a country where poverty among the 1.1bn population precludes hundreds of millions of people from purchasing even the cheapest modern goods.

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BMW, renowned for its conservative growth forecasts, plans to build just 1,200 cars here this year even though it predicts that the premium sector in India - currently 3,400 vehicles a year - will rise to around 10,000 by 2013.

Let us see if BMW can reach its target. The good thing is that BMW is in the Indian market at the right time. BMW just needs to promote its products in a good way in India.