Hyundai India Motor Ltd (HIML), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korean auto major Hyundai, is hiring back the trainee employees, who were sent out from the factory after their training period two months ago.
The company has so far hired back 200 trainee employees, Aravind Saxena, senior vice-president (marketing & sales) of HMIL, told FE on the sidelines of the launch of all-new Hyundai Verna in Bangalore. The sudden need for skilled employees comes in the wake of the Korean auto giant bagging more orders from the European nations as a few of them have announced special packages on the back of the economic slowdown, said Saxena.
The company, at its manufacturing facility in Chennai, has increased its working schedule to 9-hour in each shift a day from 8-hour to increase the production to match the export demand.
The company, which was running three shifts to produce around 52,000 cars a month, had cut down to two shifts at the end of December, to drag down the production on the back of global slowdown. Simultaneously, the company has also not renewed the training period of around 800 trainees.
“We never fired any employees in the past. We did not renew the trainees’ contracts, so they left. Now when we need them we are hiring back,” he added.
The Korean auto giant’s half of the Indian sales come through exports. Although the company had failed to meet its sales target of 5.3 lakh units, it registered a year-on-year growth of 49.6% in total sales last year at 4,89,328 units, nearly 50% of which exported to around 100 countries.
However, the company is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the current trend in the auto industry. “The trend in the auto industry is not so clear now. We can get some clear picture only after the first quarter of 2009,” said Hyundai India managing director HS Lheem. According to a Mumbai-based auto analyst, Hyundai is facing pricing pressure against Japanese auto majors Toyota and Honda in India. Both Toyota and Honda could import auto parts and other requirements for their Indian operations with relaxed import duty from their facilities in Thailand, which has Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India. But Hyundai pays 10-12% import duty when it imports parts from Korea.
Lheem said the Indian government has announced packages to stimulate the domestic auto market. He said the government should also support the large-scale exporters like Hyundai, which is using local contents up to 95% in its cars assembled in India. The company exports its cars through Chennai port.
