Sona is also exploring an acquisition of a foreign company or setting up a joint venture overseas as part of a plan to boost export revenue to 45 percent of sales by 2009/10 from just 2 percent now, Surinder Kapur told Reuters in an interview.
Indian auto parts companies are aggressively pushing exports, taking advantage of their wage-based cost advantages to meet increasing global demand for cheaper vehicles.
Led by Bharat Forge Ltd, the world's second-largest parts forging company, the industry's exports from India are forecast to grow 17 percent every year this decade from nearly $1 billion in 2003/04.
Kapur said Sona was currently evaluating the domestic market potential for truck steering systems and was talking to local vehicle makers about their cost and technology preferences.
It was also in talks with two global firms for a technology partnership for the venture that will boost its share of the 9.3 billion rupee ($200 million) Indian steering systems market.
"We will either get a license from them or invite them into the company. And if we decide to do this, we will probably set up a plant in the western part of India, that's the most likely place, or somewhere in Bangalore (in south India)," Kapur said.
Sona was set up in the mid-1980s to make steering systems for car market leader Maruti Udyog Ltd, a majority-owned unit of Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp Now 7.85 percent-owned by Maruti, Sona has a 45 percent share of the Indian market for car and utility vehicle steering systems.
Japan's Koyo Seiko Co, the world's biggest maker of car steering systems, provides technology for Sona.
Over the past two years, Sona has been a big beneficiary of an Indian car market boom driven by robust economic growth, three-decade-low interest rates and a product tax cut.
In 2003/04, Sona reported a doubling of net profit to 121 million rupees on a 31 percent rise in net revenue to 2.35 billion. Its operating margin jumped by more than two percentage points to 12.1 percent despite a 2 percent price cut given to customers and a 35 percent rise in steel prices.
Kapur said Sona had taken a further price cut of about 2 percent this year as well, though margins would benefit from rising sales of hydraulic and electronic power steering systems.