TNN              26 Sep 2008

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“India is an important market for Honda worldwide. As the market matures, bringing the R&D function into the market becomes very important,” Takeo Fukui, Honda’s global president and CEO said.

Fukui was here to launch the new City sedan which has replaced the previous version and comes for Rs 7.7 lakh, almost Rs 80,000 more than the base version of previous model . Fukui said the proposed R&D set-up would try to identify customer requirements and develop a quality vendor base.

“In terms of research and development, the first thing which is must to serve any market, is to have a detailed market research on customer preferences, what they like, what they dislike, what kind of cars they would like to drive,” he said. The next step, Fukui said, would be to manufacture it in India while also buying parts locally that are developed based on market intelligence.

“We have not started anything as yet so far. But we believe that the requirement is very strong,” Fukui said.