Renault India Plans 5 Launches in 15 Months!

It’s literally the second innings for Renault in India and this time around the company intends on making all the right moves to ensure that they walk the path of success. The French car company does have a long journey ahead of them; however they are extremely bullish of the prospects and seem to be taking giant strides in order to make up time and gain a respectable position in the Indian market.

In terms of investment, the company has committed Rs 45 billion towards their Indian operations by 2015. Further to this, the Alliance plant in Chennai which is shared with Nissan, is operational and a second assembly line should commence production within the next few months which will take the total capacity to 400,000 cars per year. The company already has a design center in India and is also looking at setting up a power train assembly plant in the near future.

Mr. Jerome Stoll, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing, laid down the plan for Renault in a simple one-liner where he stated that “India is Priority”. Amongst Renault’s global plans, the three regions of focus currently are India, Brazil and Russia. As directed by the company CEO, Carlos Ghosn, Renault has to make India work and what that statement seems to have translated to is an aggressive approach towards both product plans and exponential growth of the sales and service network.

Dacia Duster

In terms of product, Renault has ambitiously stated that they will roll out 5 products in 15 months. The first of these is already here in the form of the Renault Fluence sedan. The second product for the market is going to be the Koleos SUV, which incidentally is set to make its global debut shortly. The third offering is a hatchback based on the ‘V’ platform that is shared with Nissan. This hatchback will be a premium offering that will take on the likes of the Swift. The car has been designed by Renault’s India design center and is a car that the company claims is made for India by India. The fourth offering is the much awaited Duster SUV. This entry level SUV will be produced at the Chennai plant and according to Renault it will be a strong value for money proposition. The Duster is set to make its Indian debut by mid-2012. The fifth offering will be another sedan. The details of this car have been kept under wraps, however we expect it to be a value for money offering that will slot in with the likes of the Swift Dzire, Toyota Etios and the Hyundai Accent. By the end of 2012, Renault India will have a rather wide product portfolio that stretches across a number of segments and that should help make great inroads in the market.

To ensure that their product line up comes with suitable backing, Renault has also planned a strategic expansion plan of their sales and service network in the country. In phase one, which incidentally has been completed, Renault has set up their network in the top 12 cities with a total of 14 outlets. This itself offers the company market coverage of almost 55 per cent. By December this year, the company intends on having a 70 per cent market coverage by expanding the network to 30 cities and a total of 40 outlets. In phase three, the plan is to reach 55 cities and have around 100 outlets which will eventually give Renault a total market coverage of 89 per cent by the end of 2012. The figures speak for themselves and you don’t need to number crunch to realize that the plan is more than aggressive, however company officials made it clear that this is the only path and that losing out on the Indian market is not an option.

Renault has charted their road map for India and has set a tremendous pace at which they wish to achieve their targets. They aren’t taking the market lightly and with this aggressive approach it sure looks like they will make a success story out of their Indian innings.