Sarangi et. al, Apeejay - Journal of Management Sciences And Technology 2 (1), Feb - 2014 ISSN -2347-5005 28 Future Trend in Indian Automobile Industry : A Statistical Approach Pradeepta K. Sarangi Shahin Bano Megha Pant Asst. Professor, SCS Student, PGDM(IT), 2012-14 Student, PGDM(IT), 2012-14 Apeejay Institute of Technology Apeejay Institute of Technology Apeejay Institute of Technology Greater Noida Greater Noida Greater Noida ______________________________________________ Abstract: India is a bigger market for automobile industries. Despite a huge potential, this sector has not performed as expected. This sector suffers from slow growth, sometimes even negative growth has been reported . This research has made an attempt to figure out the growth of the Indian automobile industry for the next three years (till 2015-16) using statistical approach . Average growth rate of 6 to 11 percent has been reported for different categories in car segment. Keywords : Indian Automobile Industry, Future Trend, Statistical Approach ____________________________________________________________________________________________ I INTRODUCTION The automobile sector in India has come a long way. This sector has reported high growth rate from 26 percent to a worst negative growth in some segments during past years. Indian auto sector is one of the most vibrant industry. The automobile industry is one of India’s major sectors; accounting for 22% of the country’s manufacturing GDP. The Indian auto industry, comprising passenger cars, two-wheelers, three-wheelers and commercial vehicles, is the seventh-largest in the world with an annual production of 17.5 million vehicles, of which 2.3 million are exported [1].Indian Auto market has the potential to dominate the Global auto industry, provided, a conducive environment is created for potential innovators to come up with new pilot projects. For the year 2012-2013, automobile sector has shown a sluggish growth citing high ownership costs like excise duty, cost of registration, fuel costs, road tax and slow rural income growth. Over the next few years, solid but cautious growth is expected due to improved affordability , rising incomes and untapped markets. All these give a promising opportunity for automobile manufactures in India. According to Macquaire equities research, passenger vehicles sales is expected to double in the next four years and growth is anticipated to be higher than 16 percent from the past 10 years [2]. In this paper, we have made an attempt to forecast the sales, production and export trend for Indian automobile industry over next three years. II RESEARCH OBJECTIVE & METHODOLOGY The objective of this research is to find out the growth of Indian automobile industry and to report the forecasted values for the next three years (2013-14 to 2015-16) using statistical technique (Graphical method with linear trend line). III RESEARCH DATA The data used in this research is the historical data of Indian auto mobile industry from the period 2001-02 to 2012-13 (for the segments of production trend, domestic sales trend and export trend) collected from [3] and downloaded from the website of “Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturing”, (SIAM) [4]. Each segment consists of two categories: passenger and commercial vehicles. Data collected from both the sources have been summarized in table 1.