THE GOAN NETWORK
Narayan Pissurlenkar
Strap: Renault India Operations’s country chief executive officer and managing director, Sumit Sawhney, was in Goa to inaugurate two new dealerships in the State. The Goan Everyday caught up with him to know his plans for Goa and India.
The Goan: Renault’s small car, KWID, has become a game-changer for the company in India. Could you give us some perspective on it?
Sumit Sawhney: Well, we had over 1.25 lakh bookings for KWID. We have already put more than 50,000 KWID cars on Indian roads in a few months. We would like to continue growing like this. By the end of this year, we will have close to 270 outlets spread across the country supporting our customers.
Renault is already the fifth largest car-manufacturer in India, in terms of volume. By end of this year, we want to have 5 per cent market share in Indian car market. As a matter of fact, we already achieved this in the months of March and April this year.
TG: What do you expect from the Goa market?
SS: We are already number three in Goa’s car market. My starting expectation in Goa would have been to have a better position here than pan-India. Given that, I’m happy with the response Renault has already got in Goa.
Last month, we sold 150 cars in Goa. We are averaging over 100 cars every month. We should continue with this performance while ensuring we are there for our customers.
We are inaugurating dealerships in Panaji and Margao. In the next 30 days, a facility for service will come up in Verna. Then, we have plans to expand in Mapusa as well.
TG: You actually created a category when you launched Duster. As a result, several new cars like Ford EcoSport, Hyundai Creta and now Maruti Brezza were launched intensifying the competition. Do you see that happening with KWID as well?
SS: We created a category with Duster. If you analyze numbers, you’d realize that there are close to 16 sport-utility-vehicles (SUVs) in that segment. But, when you come to mini-car segment, which KWID belongs to, you’d see that only two brands were successful here.
It’s important to come up with a full strategy in mini-car segment; you can’t have a half-baked strategy here. You have to give the car at a certain price to the customer. You need strong localization. We already have 98 percent localisation for KWID in India. You need to understand Indian customers. Given all this, I don’t see the kind of rush in KWID’s segment the kind we saw in the SUV segment.
TG: Are you going to launch new cars in Indian market?
SS: Yes, we are intending to launch one new car every year in India. We have just launched a new Duster in India. We are about to launch a new 1 litre, 1000cc KWID. Toward the end of this year, we will launch KWID’s automatic variant as well.
TG: Does Renault export to other countries from India also?
SS: Yes, we did export Duster. We have already started exporting KWID. I’m going to Colombo soon to inaugurate our distributorship there. We are going to sell our cars in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. We have already made an announcement that we will be selling KWID in Brazil and other Latin-American countries. We are already exploring a few other markets in Africa for KWID. We have already started shipping cars to SAARC countries.
