Friday, April 23, 2010

Tamil Nadu: Automobile Capital

Just a few years ago, if you'd ask someone to name a leading car manufacturing city, they might say Detroit. Now, Chennai will need to be on that list. Tamil Nadu (the state where Chennai is located) is the only Indian state to manufacture seven big automobile brands: Ford, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Daimler, Nissan, Renault, and BMW. According to today's paper, by 2010, Chennai would have an installed capacity to produce 1,280,000 cars and 350,000 commercial vehicles per year. Chennai is now one of the top 10 automobile manufacturing centers and also makes a variety of other wheeled structures including bikes and army tanks.
Another of Chennai's big manufacturing item is cell phones. Its Nokia plant is now the world's largest plant for cell phone manufacturing - something achieved in less than three years.
Japan is one country that is eyeing Tamil Nadu (and Chennai) as an attractive and cost-effective place for manufacturing. That doesn't surprise me, considering the increasing numbers of Japanese students at our school. Currently South Korea is by far our largest population at the school, due largely to Hyundai. We also have quite a number of American kids due to Ford and many blondies from Scandinavian countries due to Nokia.
As you can see, the success and growth of the manufacturing business here in Chennai directly impacts the school. A stable or growing foreign manufacturing base is definitely what the school is looking for.

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