Nissan looks to double market share in India by 2020

New Delhi: Eyeing a five per cent market share in India by 2020, Japanese car major Nissan today said it plans to launch at least one product per year here beginning 2018 and has begun building sales network in the country.

"We have understood now so we now need to put forth things in practice. I think we are in that intermediate state where we have understood the market and now lot of new things are in pipeline," Nissan India Operations President Guillaume Sicard told PTI.

The company is looking to launch at least one product per year in the country starting 2018. As part of its learning the company will bring in products like Nissan Xtrail Hybrid, GTR in the country from 2018, Sicard said.

The company aims to increase its market share in the country from current 2 per cent to 5 per cent by 2020, he said adding, "The vision is to achieve 5 per cent market share by 2020.

So it is something which is definitely possible." It takes time to understand the customer in terms of pricing, product, value. "It takes time to understand Indian market. You have lot of intuitions...proven wrong. You think you need to make cheap cars in India to sell which is wrong," he said.

In auto industry it takes around four years to see the results if your understanding, he added. "We are also building the sales network in the country," he added. On new product pipeline, he said: "We will have some cars from Nissan and Datsun which are targeted at what customer wants in terms of design, probably some SUVs."

Commenting on the upcoming festive season, he added that the company aims to launch new variants of its various products including recently launched hatchback RediGo and Terrano SUV to propel sales.

The company is also looking to limit the number of variants of its products in order to make it easy for the customer to pick one. "We will launch a new version of redi-GO with enhanced design, AMT version of Terrano, Datsun Go and Go+ models with extra features. Also, we plan to introduce Micra with full black interiors," Sicard said.

When asked if the company plans to launch 1,000 cc version of redi-GO, he said that that the company might look at it at a later stage.

"Right now we plan to launch a new variant of redi-GO with design change. After that anything is possible in terms of engine or features," Sicard said. On the rationalisation of variants, he said it is regular process which is being taken with the purpose of making it easy for the customer with lesser number of grades.

"I really want to discipline the marketing to have nice level offer but not too many kinds of variants and cross variants and so on," Sicard said.