The Fiat Group views India as a strategic market and Basavanhalli is confident of replicating the Groups' global standards in this country across the board including sales, marketing, distribution and after-sales departments. "We have undertaken a series of initiatives in order to provide a very high level of service to all of our business partners and to further engage with our customers. The current organisational structure provides us with a solid platform to elevate our company as one of the prominent players in the Indian automobile market."

How about the manufacturing capabilities? "Our manufacturing capabilities and capacities at the Ranjangaon Plant are definitely geared up to meet our aspirations and if the need be we can even look at expanding the same in the near future," he says. Fiat is looking to launch a slew of products across segments to keep itself fresh and relevant in the market on an ongoing basis. "That long with a 100 plus dealer network and upcoming marketing initiatives, we will be in a strong position to capitalise on the Competitive Market."

Since he is talking about introducing new vehicles, how strong is Fiat's R&D in India? How about the R&D activities? "We have our global R&D centre in Turin supporting us but more importantly, we have one of the biggest technical centres in Chennai working for us. We have over a 1,000 engineers working for us in Chennai and Pune. The beauty of this is that they are already working global platforms for other global markets like Brazil, Turin and Detroit.