With its new World Truck range, Tata Motors is aiming at the number one spot in truck manufacturing in South Korea, one of Asia's most developed economies.

With the new trucks offering performance and reliability with lower cost of ownership, Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Company Limited (TDCV), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tata Motors, hopes to not just the largest exporter of medium and heavy commercial vehicles but also manufacturer and seller in that country. P M Telang, managing director, operations of Tata Motors said the recently launched trucks will be unveiled in India in the next quarter.

Toward this end, the company is likely to offer the newly designed truck platform for sale as early as this month in Korea. "We have upgraded our current range sold in South Korea to comply with the Euro IV deadline, which comes into effect from January next year. We expect that over a period of time, the existing models will taper off and the World Truck range will taper up in terms of market share," Ravi Pisharody, vice president - commercial vehicles, Tata Motors, told reporters.

Earlier, Tata Motors was mulling replacing its existing product range in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) markets with World Truck, as the latter is Euro IV compliant.

Pisharody said the company had not fixed any time frame to phase out the existing range of trucks from the South Korean market. "One can only say that it is quite likely that in Korea, the trucks will gain market share faster because there its a matter of one product range that is superseding another, whereas in India it is actually changing the whole paradigm of trucking. So the acceptance and adaptations levels would be different in different places," he added.

The World Truck will help Tata take on Volvo, Nissan and Daimler Chrysler, who have significant presence and expertise in developing trucks ranging from 10 tonne to 75 tonne and even more, an auto industry expert said.

"There is a segment of the market to which Tata Motors was not catering to at all. With a product such as World Truck, it gives us an opportunity to participate in a segment that was not available to us," Pisharody said. Top Tata officials said that the new truck will take almost five years or so before it establishes itself as a substantial business line in India. That's why Tata Motors is focussing on select customers such as large fleet owners.