Saar: Amongst others, Skoda India’s head honcho, Gurpratap Singh Boparai, will also become the MD for Volkswagen India from 2019.

Volkswagen Group is pretty darn serious about establishing a mass-market base in India. The Germans released a promising roadmap under a project called ‘India 2.0’ earlier this year and assigned its subsidiary, Skoda Auto, the responsibility to spearhead its proceedings and implementation via its Indian arm. News has now come in that the Volkswagen Group will be making some Leadership changes in India to create a strong core for the aforementioned project.

From January 1, 2019, Gurpratap Singh Boparai, who is the current managing director (MD) of Skoda Auto India Pvt. Ltd., will also become the MD of Volkswagen India Pvt. Ltd. Simultaneously, Pavel Richter, who is the production technical director of India 2.0 project, will take the responsibilities for production at both of Volkswagen’s India plants. The restructuring will see Andreas Lauermann moving to the Volkswagen Group by the of the year to take on a new role.

Here’s what Boparai said about this restructuring in an official release:

With the introduction of the new management structure, we are laying the foundations both for the joint implementation of ‘India 2.0’ and for achieving our goals in India: we will secure employment in India, create new jobs, attract talent and launch high quality and attractive vehicles on the market.

Volkswagen Group will be investing one billion euros in India in a matter of two years, starting 2019. The target is to capture a 5 per cent combined market share between the Indian arms of Volkswagen and Skoda, by the year 2025. In 2020, Skoda will be releasing an SUV built on the MQB-A0-IN platform, which has been conceived for the Indian market. VW says that the said platform already meets the stricter legal requirements in India, which will come into effect from 2020. Post that, Volkswagen will redress and rebadge the SUV and launch it in India under its own portfolio. While it will surely manufacture the 1.0-litre TSI engine in India, Volkswagen Group will also examine the possibility to export the India-made models.