India’s top utility vehicle maker, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., said on Monday it had signed a deal with Global Vehicles USA Inc. to distribute Mahindra’s sports utility vehicle and pick-up in the U.S. market.

The launch date and other details will be announced during the second quarter of 2007, Mahindra said in a statement.

“We realise that even to stay on top of the Indian market, we need to be a global player and the U.S. forms a crucial part of our strategy,” Pawan Goenka, president of Mahindra’s automotive unit, was quoted as saying.

“We want to capture at least a small fraction of that (U.S. market for SUVs and pick-ups) to start with,” he said.

Mahindra would launch an upgraded version of the pick-up and its SUV, Scorpio, it said.

Global Vehicles has 130 dealers, and will expand the network to around 200 in time for the launch, the statement said.

A spokesman for Global Vehicle told Reuters last week the two firms had signed an agreement, and that they were looking at “pretty aggressive volumes.”

Mahindra plans to get about a fifth of its revenue from exports in the next few years, up from 5 percent now. It already exports to Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Mahindra, the world’s fourth-largest tractor maker, has a joint venture with a unit of Navistar Inc. to make medium and heavy trucks in India from 2007, and a deal with France’s Renault to assemble 500,000 cars a year in India.