Toyota kicks off ‘Go Rural' drive; plans more dealerships in smaller cities

The company launched an initiative called 'Go Rural' in the last quarter of 2011 where a pilot study was carried out in the eastern region.

Cars were put on display in the Durgapur area in West Bengal and the response was encouraging enough for Toyota to understand that smaller centres in India were critical to its growth. "This was the beginning of our 'Go Rural' drive. We had our dealers try out something similar in other parts of the country where cars were showcased on select days in a month.

We were amazed to see that brand Toyota had so much goodwill despite our relatively negligible presence," Mr Sandeep Singh, Deputy Managing Director of Toyota Kirloskar Motor, told Business Line. By February, the 'Go Rural' momentum had intensified with a growing list of interested customers. There were 160 bookings last month and Toyota has targeted at least 500 more each month between now and end-July.

It also hopes to have in place 25 dealerships in these smaller centres by the end of this year, going up to twice as much in 2013.