By Nandan Mandayam
Bengaluru (Reuters) -Renault will add more SUV’s to small cars in its model lineup in India, as the French carmaker looks to boost utilization levels at its factory and rebuild its share in the world’s third-largest car market, a senior executive said.
With a planned investment of $600 million, Renault aims to grow domestic sales and exports from India after taking over alliance partner Nissan Motor’s share in the jointly-owned plant, Venkatram Mamillapalle, Renault India’s managing director, said.
“We are going to go offensive on the product launches moving forward,” Mamillapalle told Reuters in an interview.
He said Renault would launch compact and mid-sized SUVs in India where it now sells three models – a small car Kwid, a small SUV Kiger, and a small seven-seater Triber, its top selling Indian model.
While India accounts for less than 2% of Renault’s global sales, it is one of five cost-competitive international hubs the carmaker is counting on to boost sales outside of its home market of Europe.
Lack of new model launches and a lineup skewed towards small cars, a segment that is rapidly shrinking, has pushed Renault’s share of the Indian car market to less than 1% from over 3% five years ago, industry data showed.
On Wednesday, it launched Triber’s refreshed version – its first launch in over four years, and the first of four new models it plans to bring to the market over the next two years.
SUVs and three-row family cars made up about 65% of India’s annual car sales of 4.3 million units last fiscal year. Small cars accounted for the rest, with their share shrinking from over 60% five years ago.
The factory in southern India, now fully owned by Renault, runs at about 50% of its annual capacity of around 500,000 units and Mamillapalle said the carmaker counted on Indian market growth and new export markets beyond Southeast Asia and South Africa to help bring its utilisation rate to 80%-100%.
(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam in BengaluruEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
