Leadership at Hyundai Motor India will soon see a change, as the company’s current MD – SS Kim, will be taking over a global position at the South Korean carmaker’s headquarters in the city of Seoul in the company’s homeland. His position will be taken over by Unsoo Kim, who has been appointed as the new MD for Hyundai Motor India and will take the charge from January 1, 2022, onwards.
SS Kim took the charge as MD, Hyundai Motor India on December 4, 2018. In a stint of roughly 3 years. SS Kim played a pivotal role in Hyundai growth in the Indian market. In the financial year period 2018-19, Hyundai Motor India sold a total of 5,45 lakh units, and thus, capturing a market share of 16 per cent in the private vehicle market and of 13 per cent in the UV space.
Even during the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the automaker’s PV share rose to 17 per cent with sales of 4.7 lakh units, whereas the company’s UV market share rose to 20 per cent under SS Kim’s leadership.
In a recent interaction with Financial Express, SS Kim quoted about the pace the HMIL picked up post first lockdown, “A notable trend is that the sales percentage of top variants has been increasing. For example, in the i20, the sales share of the top two trims in 2019 was 18% but this has increased to over 30%. In the Creta, the sales share of the top two trims was 44%, but now it has gone up to 47%; in the Verna it has increased from 82% to 89%. This implies that customers want features such as sunroof, connectivity and a lot of technology on the dashboard.”
He added, “We will introduce our dedicated EV platform called the E-GMP (Electric Global Modular Platform) for manufacturing/assembling these EVs in India. We are investing about Rs 4,000 crore in R&D towards the expansion of the EV line-up. By next year (2022) we should be able to launch our second EV, and the remaining over the years till 2028.”