Neemrana Signal — Toyoda Gosei Minda India: a Toyota Group partnership at Neemrana — 05 Oct

Where Japanese and Indian car-parts expertise meet

At Majrakath, Toyoda Gosei Uno Minda India makes airbags, steering wheels and weatherstrips, the rubber seals around car doors and windows, for carmakers in India. The company said the plant employed about 1,500 people in March 2024.

In September, Toyoda Gosei announced its eighth Indian plant, a Rs 580-crore factory in Maharashtra. It will use collaborative robots and Karakuri, a traditional Japanese technology powered by simple mechanisms such as levers and springs. The Majrakath plant has helped build that Indian footprint.

The company is a joint venture between Toyoda Gosei, a Toyota Group parts maker, and India's Uno Minda group. It began operating in 2009 and also has plants in Bawal, Haryana, and in Gujarat. The Neemrana plant, established in April 2008, is its headquarters. It produces airbags, including several types designed for front and side collisionsm steering wheels, weatherstrips, functional components (the group's examples include plastic fuel filler pipes)

An expansion driven by safety rules. The plant has grown as India has tightened its car safety rules. In February 2023, Toyoda Gosei announced it would expand the Neemrana plant and install new airbag production equipment, because front airbags were becoming common and side and curtain airbags were expected to spread.

Production in the new building began in September 2024. The built-up area grew from about 21,000 to about 35,000 square metres on a site of about 78,000 square metres.

Uno Minda says the plant can make about 1.8 million driver and passenger airbags a year. The expansion adds about 300,000 more of those and about 900,000 knee and side airbags.

Every new car that leaves an Indian showroom with extra airbags may contain safety components made at Majrakath.

At plots SP2-30 and SP2-31 in RIICO's Majrakath industrial area, Toyoda Gosei Minda India runs a manufacturing operation with Rs 440 crore of capital, according to company registration records.

Toyoda Gosei is a Toyota Group parts maker, and Minda is an Indian car-parts group. Toyoda Gosei runs seven Indian factories, including one in Rajasthan, and mainly supplies Japanese carmakers.

A cleaner fuel stop for trucks on NH-48

The trucks that carry Neemrana's goods along NH-48 may soon have a cleaner fuel option. Rajasthan State Gas, a state government joint venture, is building the state's first LNG station in the RIICO Neemrana industrial area with GAIL Gas.

The Rs 15-crore project will have two LNG tanks holding 56 kilolitres in total and will supply liquefied natural gas to heavy commercial vehicles, mining vehicles and factories.

Construction is under way.

Managing director Ranveer Singh says it will help long-haul vehicles, mining areas and industrial units.

LNG produces fewer emissions than diesel. For Neemrana's logistics businesses, it could also reduce fuel costs over time.

Daikin has made Neemrana more than a production site. It commissioned its first Indian research and development centre there.

In April 2022, it opened the Daikin Japanese Institute of Manufacturing Excellence (DJIME), which trains young people in Japanese manufacturing practices.

Daikin's newer Rs 1,000-crore global R&D investment is planned for Haryana, not Neemrana.

That makes the existing Neemrana R&D centre and DJIME more important as a test of how Daikin's local base will grow.

Several Japanese companies run Neemrana plants without making regular headlines. Company registration records list these operations:

Nippon Steel and Sumikin Pipe India at Majrakath, with Rs 218 crore of capital

Y-Tec India, a machinery and equipment maker in the Japanese Zone, with Rs 245 crore of capital

Hitachi Chemical, Sanac India, Neemrana Steel Service Center and Beltecno India, also in the Japanese Zone

These plants make steel pipes, machinery and components that supply India's manufacturing and construction sectors. The Embassy of Japan and JETRO's list shows 6,464 Japanese business establishments in India.

Neemrana remains one of the best-known Japanese industrial locations, though Rajasthan is not among the five states with the most Japanese establishments.

Several Japanese companies run Neemrana plants without making regular headlines. Company registration records list these operations:

Nippon Steel and Sumikin Pipe India at Majrakath, with Rs 218 crore of capital

Y-Tec India, a machinery and equipment maker in the Japanese Zone, with Rs 245 crore of capital

Hitachi Chemical, Sanac India, Neemrana Steel Service Center and Beltecno India, also in the Japanese Zone

These plants make steel pipes, machinery and components that supply India's manufacturing and construction sectors. The Embassy of Japan and JETRO's list shows 6464 Japanese business establishments in India.

Neemrana remains one of the best-known Japanese industrial locations, though Rajasthan is not among the five states with the most Japanese establishments.

Briston World Group's Mirai Hills project in Neemrana plans a koi bridge garden, terrace dining, a rooftop infinity pool, a sky lounge and a wellness studio, according to the project's marketing page.

Briston has publicly discussed Miyawaki-style forests for Neemrana. The water body and Japanese and Asian restaurants you describe aren't in the material I could find, so they're marked below as needing confirmation from the company.

"A quieter kind of luxury"

Mirai means "future" in Japanese, and the project is presented as an Indo-Japanese wellness residence in Neemrana, "a slower, more considered way to live".

Its marketing builds the day around light, water and calm: "Morning light on the water. A swim as the sky changes colour."

It describes "the eternal garden", where water, flowers and pathways form "a living sanctuary".

Briston's posts describe Indo-Japanese wellness architecture that combines structural minimalism with East Asian design.

They also mention a branded wellness spa where residents could "reset, heal, and unwind without leaving home".

Bringing that idea into Mirai Hills would make green space a defining feature of the project. In Neemrana, water will decide whether the plan works. A Rajasthan reforestation project at Maruvan showed that a forest is more likely to thrive when ponds, channels and wells are built first to collect monsoon water. A water body at the entrance could look attractive and also help the forest survive, if it's designed to recharge groundwater rather than draw on it.

Dinner on the terrace, a swim on the roof

The project's amenities centre on outdoor and rooftop living:

a rooftop infinity pool

a sky lounge

terrace garden dining

a koi bridge garden

a wellness studio

Residents shall swim on the roof as the sky turns orange, for dinner on the terrace. The menu offers Japanese and other Asian dishes alongside Rajasthani food.

The proposed Emerald Valley plans an unusual kind of education. Instead of studying mainly from textbooks and then learning the job after being hired, students would work on projects set by Neemrana's industries. They'd graduate having already done the kind of work employers need. If the model is built as envisioned, Rajasthan's young people would be job-ready on graduation, and the corridor's factories would spend far less time and money training new recruits.

Emerald Valley is a proposed concept. It hasn't been approved, isn't operational and isn't open for investment. The learning model described here is its promoters' vision, not a programme that exists yet.

How project-based learning would work

A student doesn't have to be in lecture hall. He is in a project studio with four classmates, working on a problem brought by a Japanese plant in the corridor. A component that keeps failing quality checks. An engineer from the company comes in every week to mentor the team. Her teachers help her learn the mathematics, materials science and quality methods needed to solve it.

By the end of the term, her team presents a fix to the plant's managers. If it works, the plant uses it. The student gets a portfolio, a reference and direct experience of how Japanese factories work.

Within one year one completes the project as well as gets industry led training also and is ready for deployment without going for industry led training.

Artificial Intelligence

AR/VR/XR

Game Development

Quantum Computing

automation

energy efficiency

water recycling

supply-chain planning

Industry-led projects would replace much of the gap between education and employment. Students would learn by doing the work.

Why it could be a game changer? The idea responds to a well-known problem. India produces lakhs of engineering graduates a year, but only about 15% are considered employable.

Only about 15% of engineering colleges in tier-2 and tier-3 cities have active links with industry.