BANGALORE: Guillaume Sicard, the President of Nissan India operations, was in New Delhi this week to inaugurate the 160th sales touch-point of the company. In charge of both the Nissan and Datsun brands, Sicard says the company is on track to reach the target of 300 touch-points by 2016.
He is confident that Datsun will make an increasingly important contribution to Nissan India sales volumes in the months to come. He adds that both the Datsun Go and the Go+ will get driver’s airbag as an option in the second quarter of 2015. Excerpts:
Nissan India raised car prices earlier this month. Why?
The increase in our prices was mainly due to the withdrawal of excise benefits by the government. Earlier, Nissan had passed on 100% benefit to the customers.
You have phased out the luxury mid-size sedan Teana. This is the third product you have discontinued in India in less than a year, after the X-Trail and the 370Z. Does this mean Nissan India now wants to focus on the mass market?
The Teana has been phased out in India and we currently do not have any plans to launch the next generation. (Teana was a CKD.) Nissan India has a clear product strategy to introduce vehicles that meet the needs of the Indian customer. We have a strong global model line-up and, as part of our CBU strategy, we are evaluating introducing the right products which deliver more value to the Indian customer.
Nissan India saw a 23.3% rise in December sales over a year earlier. In fact, the car market as a whole grew in that month. Was Nissan a part of the momentum, or do you attribute this growth to any particular product or any specific marketing strategy?
We have registered a steady year-on-year growth for the past several months in sales, owing to strong cross-segment from both the Nissan and Datsun brands, offering distinctive, attractive and accessible products that fit perfectly into our customers’ everyday lives. Of course, the positive momentum of the industry helped us as well.
Are you hopeful of retaining that momentum as far as the January-March quarter sales are concerned?
With the new India business structure, we are undertaking major brand-building activities to strengthen our brand power combined with rapid network expansion and localisation, and we are very confident of maintaining the growth momentum.
The Datsun Go, clearly, didn’t sell as well as you would have expected. What do you attribute the reasons to?
A degree of sales ramp-up is expected while the brand becomes established in India. The Datsun Go as well as the newly-launched Go+ have been accepted well and have got positive reviews from various stakeholders. Obviously, we want to sell more. We are fully committed to further developing the brand, our retail network and our marketing presence. We are confident that Datsun will make an increasingly important contribution to our sales volume.
