China's Great Wall Motor signs MoU with Maha govt, to invest $1 billion in India

Great Wall Motor (GWM) on Wednesday announced another step towards its entry in the Indian market by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra government. The signing was in the presence of Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and Sun Weidong, Chinese ambassador in India.

GWM has announced that it will make a phased investment of $1 billion in the country. The company had acquired the Talegaon facility near Pune from General Motors in January.

With the signing of the MoU, GWM has officially confirmed that the plant will have cutting-edge technology and along with an R&D centre in Bengaluru, will generate employment for over 3,000 people. "We would like to thank the Maharashtra government for extending full support and helping us foster a long and mutually beneficial cooperation that hopefully will turn out to be a great business proposition for both," said Parker Shi - Managing Director, of Indian subsidiary of GWM. "Overall we are committed to 1 Bn US$ of investment in India in a phased manner, which is directed towards manufacturing world class intelligent & premium products, R&D centre, building supply chain and providing jobs to over 3000 people in a phased manner."

GWM is known for its sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and is looking at building on the demand for such cars in the Indian market.

While the Baoding, Hebei-based based company continues to assert that it is confident of Indian automobile industry's growth story, the current situation remains a challenge for OEMs at large - both in India and across the globe. Sales are not expected to pick up for months while established players are busy announcing finance schemes to generate some sort of buzz in the market. After a tumultuous 2019, 2020 has so far been out rightly painful. As such, GWM may well have an uphill task at hand.