Is Datsun going to be game-changer for Nissan in India? The Japanese auto major, it seems, is doing everything to position its vehicle as a volume player with the ‘Global Brand Local Product’ tag in India.
Nissan believes the Datsun will give the firm the requisite platform to scale up its sales and help fill up 50% of the total mass market segment. Nissan is not only eyeing the Indian market with Datsun, but also looking at expanding its exports base.
“We strongly believe that the Datsun brand of cars will give us 50% of total sales in India going forward. We want to position as a premium product in the mass market segment and at cost below R4 lakh. We want to make Indian customers pride owners of Datsun brand car and that is our goal. It is a Global Brand and Local Product. This brand will give us economy of scale in India and will be the game-changer for us,” said Ashwani Gupta, programme director, control corporate plan group, Datsun Business Unit.
“We will be launching two products in 2014. One will be early and another product from three years from now. We have options to produce both diesel and petrol versions. It is our fundamental belief that we need to maintain and offer the Datsun brand cars with a price tag below R4 lakh,” Gupta said.
In an interview with FE on Wednesday, Gupta, who is in the country to spearhead the branding and positioning of the Datsun brand ahead of its early 2014 launch, said: “When we say it’s a local product, it means the product is designed, engineered, manufactured with components sourced from local suppliers. It comes with a global brand image. We can produce Datsun cars under R4 lakh in India as we could cut lot of costs – from designing to manufacturing and distribution stages – as we believe we can source high-quality components from vendors in India and with frugal engineering capabilities.”
“We are creating a vendor park here in Chennai where we will work with them to ensure that not only they meet the quality standards but can offer at competitive cost. We are confident that we can deliver the global brand at local product cost as we believe we can remove all non-value cost items.?
“We have options either to have dedicated dealerships, team for marketing/distribution or to utilise the existing dealers network of Nissan in India. We are also working on the modalities to position Datsun as each brand requires dedicated focus and holds core value for us in India. However, our objective is to create a strong brand image for Datsun in India and we will come out with strategy going forward.”
To another question, Gupta said: “As of now, our plan is to manufacture Datsun in the existing facility of our alliance partners, Nissan and Renault, in Chennai.?