In an exclusive interaction with FE at the Auto Expo 2016, Guilamme Sicard, president Nissan India operations said that the company is opening outlets mostly in the Tier 2, Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities. (Photo: Vikash Yogi/Ashish Jha) In order to penetrate the Indian market, Nissan India has made has resorted to the strategy of promoting the Datsun brand in the tier 2, tier 3 and small towns, while Nissan will be the brand for premium customers in the urban pockets of the country. In an exclusive interaction with FE at the Auto Expo 2016, Guilamme Sicard, president Nissan India operations said that the company is opening outlets mostly in the Tier 2, Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities and most of them are Datsun outlets. “We are targeting customers in that part of India, where customers wants to get access to the four wheeler products. Th development of the network will be more in new and developing parts of India than the traditional hubs,” added Sicard. In the Auto Expo 2016, Nissan showed a concept of Datsun Go Cross which is crossover concept. As the demand for small cars like Datsun Go and Go plus are always more in the small town, this is a concious decision taken by the company to increase its market share in the domestic market. At present Nissan’s market share in the India is less than 2% and the company has set a target of achieving 5% market share in India by 2020. The company export 70% of the total vehicles manufactured in its plant in India. “We are going to introduce one product every year in India and then we need need to have good capacity in terms of engineering and production. Perception about our after sales service was very negative but we have managed to improve it in the last one year,” added Sicard. At present Nissan has a bit more than 200 dealers across the country and it intends to increase it to 300 by 2017.
