India market is the best base to catch newer trends like electric vehicles or shared mobility, said Fabrice Cambolive, the chairman of Renault’s Africa-Middle East-India region, in an interview conducted by the Economic Times.
He also stated that Renault’s India strategy will see the automaker focus on fewer products and build those products instead of coming up with multiple products. All this to boost Renault’s market share in the country, reveals the report by ET.
Fabrice Cambolive said “For me, India is a stress test, it is a very hard market, where we have to be the best on all parameters. We not only have to be patient, but we have to take time to push the product, and not fire away multiple products, because cost of awareness and familiarity is huge.”
“We are at the beginning of our journey. India is a strategic market for us, we expect the market to grow by 8-10%. Soon it will become third-largest car market in the world with 5 million units. India is not only a demanding location from a localisation standpoint, but it is also a good base to conceive, design, produce the car and act as a base to catch new trends for the future. Be it shared mobility or EVs,” he added.
The company has seen a fall in its volume for Indian market which is the second largest market for Renault in Africa-Middle East-India, with a reduction in average Kwid sales from 10,000 units to 5,000-6,000 units a month. Also, launch of its new utility vehicles like Lodgy and Captur did not excite the Indian market as Duster or Kwid did. The ET report says that the newly launched Captur has sold around 2,500 units in the last six months which parallels a week to 10 day’s sales of Hyundai Creta, the segment leader.
The company has witnessed decline in annual sales by 24.4 percent to one lakh units in financial year 2018 in a market that grew 8 percent, states the ET report. Renault is depending on interventions on the Kwid and the petrol variant of Captur to bring in some excitement in Indian market and increase their sales.
