India: Renault-Nissan Aims for 15 Percent Share in the Passenger Vehicle Market
- Renault-Nissan Alliance is aiming to expand market share in India by launching low-price vehicles. In fiscal 2016 (ends at March 2017), the two automakers intend to capture over 15 percent of India's passenger vehicle market (including utility vehicles and vans). Nissan released the Datsun budget brand in 2014, while Renault launched the Kwid in mid-2015, a low-price model based on the new design method called CMF or Common Module Family. Nevertheless, the alliance's combined market share stood at 3.7 percent in 2014 and achieving its goal appears to be difficult.
- In India, following the launch of the Kwid, Nissan also plans to release a CMF-based model under the Datsun brand by 2017. The new Datsun model is intended to be cheaper than the Go small hatchback (324,000 INR) and the Go+ MPV (379,000 INR), targeting mainly regional cities.
- Looking at Nissan's business operations in India, thanks to the launch of the Datsun brand, sales volume increased 53.7 percent year-on-year to 49,313 units and production volume went up 15.6 percent to 166,698 units. Although export ratio fell 5.4pp to 71.5 percent, export volume exceeded 100,000 units for the fourth consecutive year.
- It appears that Nissan is positioning India as an export hub for markets in Africa and Europe. Recently, the Japanese automaker began the export of the low-price Datsun brand, launching the Datsun Go in South Africa in June 2014.
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