Tokyo - The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that it held an opening ceremony for Yokohama India, the company's Indian subsidiary, on July 27 at a hotel in New Delhi in order to commemorate the full-fledged start of tire sales operation in the fast-growing country. Invited to the ceremony were Yasukuni Enoki, Japanese ambassador to India, and local JETRO officers in addition to approximately 70 people from local tire dealers, Japan-owned carmakers and media. Yokohama Rubber board director and senior managing corporate officer Takashi Sugimoto and board director and corporate officer Tooru Kobayashi represented the parent company at the ceremony.

In the past, Yokohama Rubber has marketed passenger car tires in India through its Singaporean tire distributor. From now on, however, the company will carry out gradual transition to sales activities based on its independent strategy. To begin with, it will make effort to establish a high-performance, high-quality brand image mainly among users of high-performance passenger cars, an area in which Yokohama Rubber is particularly strong, and then broaden the user base to include more general users and eventually expand sales volume in the country. In order to achieve these goals Yokohama Rubber will launch its global premium brand ADVAN and other high-performance tires in India and intensively unfold advertisement campaign through car magazines and other media.

In April 2007, Yokohama Rubber founded Yokohama India as part of its program to strengthen operations in the BRICs countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Yokohama Rubber plans to make the subsidiary the holding company in India and already brings into view tire production and non-tire businesses beyond tire sales.

Yokohama Rubber is actively expanding businesses in the BRICs countries. It has already established 5 manufacturing and sales companies (2 tire companies and 3 non-tire product companies) and a tire sales company under a holding company in China in addition to a tire sales company in Russia. For Yokohama Rubber, India is the third country it has developed businesses in the BRICs countries by creating a local subsidiary.

Corporate name: Yokohama India Pvt. Ltd.
Address: 517-519, Antriksh Bhawan 5th Floor, 22 Kasturba Gandhi Marg.,
New Delhi – 110 001 (Phone: 91-11-66099559)
Founded: April 2007
Paid-in capital: 50 million yen (100% by Yokohama Rubber)
Headquartered: New Delhi
Representative: Fumihiro Nishi (on loan from Yokohama Rubber)
Staff: 12 members including representative Nishi and other
2 Japanese nationals (As of July 2007)