We need to connect more with customers, expand our network: Guillaume Sicard

Interview with President, Nissan Motor India

Nissan, the Japanese automobile major, has announced the appointment of Guillaume Sicard, 45, deputy president of its Indian arm since July, as the new head. He will be  responsible for all the company’s operations in India, including manufacturing at the plant in Chennai which has yearly capacity of 400,000 units. Edited excerpts of a talk with T E Narasimhan.

What will be your immediate focus?

The main focus is to develop the two brands, Nissan and Datsun, and to increase  the awareness. These brands  should be more on top of the customers' mind. We have to increase our capacity on the overall communication. We need to connect more. There will be more focused advertising and culturally connected advertising.

The second focus will be improving the customer satisfaction. We are lucky to have good quality cars, showing in all surveys. We can further improve our service and customer satisfaction.

Are you happy with the current product portfolio or do you see a gap?

Indian consumers like sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and Nissan is an expert on those kinds of cars. If we have to aim at something, we have to keep working on SUVs. It matches our need in India and we have a deep route in SUVs. We have a nice range and I aim to convince the management to have more, and it will come. For the time being, we have enough on our plate.

When is the Micra's replacement expected to hit the road?

In 2016. That segment has got potential and the Micra has its image. There is opportunity to keep on growing in this segment. Micra, for us, is still a very fresh product.

Are you happy with the market coverage?

Globally, we have a good network, a coverage of 80-90 per cent.  But in India, we are covering only a third; we want to increase it to 50 per cent. I don't want to do so for only the sake of increasing; we want to find quality partners. We will add 50 dealers this financial year.

So, we will be looking at better communication, improved customer satisfaction, more touch points and increasing the dealer network.

Any plans to increase production?

We want to optimise our current capacity, of 480,000 units a  year; the utilisation is 346,359. We can push the production line.

Nissan has set a target of eight to 10 per cent in the Indian passenger car market. By when do you think you will be able to achieve this?

With our experience in many countries, it is possible. I  know we can reach it. We have the products, quality and capacity.

Are you happy with the Datsun's performance? There are some apprehensions.

I am happy about the product satisfaction, which is very high, according to our internal survey. However, we need to keep on growing with Datsun and need to increase the network coverage. Again, we need to communicate more about the Datsun.

On the Indian car market.
We estimate five to 10 per cent growth of the passenger car market (this year). We are very positive, which is why we are increasing our network and new products.