Kolkata: Indian car industry giants TATA and Maruti are looking for engineers from U.S. and Europe to add more to their projects in the western market. Last month, TATA Motors and Maruti Suzuki India had participated in the Society of Auto Engineers' 2009 World Congress Career Fair at Detroit for recruiting engineers from U.S. to expand their operations in the area, reported Business Standard.

The fair provides prominent platform for the engineers from the U.S. Both the companies have made their list of the engineers, as Maruti have short listed 10 candidates and TATA has denied to reveal the number of the short listed, but have said that recruiting specialists for different functions of product development, as for their Research and Development expansion plans in India. The current economic slowdown may provide excellent opportunity to these engineers to move to the Indian firms.

Maruti Suzuki India has a demand of 150,000 cars, which has doubled in the last fiscal year, of the 'A-Star' model in Europe which sells under the brand name Alto. The company is also working for improving the Omni and M-800 to Bharat Stage 4. "We are recruiting for engine, transmission, body electricals, styling and product planning, brakes, suspension, safety & crash, interiors, BIW (body in white exterior), the focus will primarily be on small cars," said a spokesperson.
TATA Motors has planned to launch its dream project NANO in the U.S. but for which it will need to upgrade the car as the present models Bharat Stage II and Bharat Stage III, which does not match up to the standards in the U.S regarding the emission norms and safety parameters.. These U.S. engineers can provide significant help TATA to upgrade the product before it hits the market. The company is planning to launch Tata Prima, a concept luxury sedan, and the Electric Tata Indica Vista.

Both Indian automobile giants will recruit some of the best engineers to meet the demand and to explore the global market of global market for fuel-efficient compact cars starting from U.S. and Europe.