 "India is a complex country, whoever comes to India should be modest: Renault-Nissan CEO")
“In order to help us, we need partners, who help us to overall market, in specific segments and can share something, so we partnered with Mahaindra (Renault), Alliance (Bajaj), Nissan (Ashok Leyland)”.
“Not all of the partnerships were productive, but lots of information and knowledge were exchanged,” he said.
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Some achievements were made with Mahindra, but unfortunately at a point Renault has to say that this is not the way future for us and need to do something else. Mahindra and Renault are doing well on their own”.
With Bajaj the Alliance tried to put together Ultra low cost car, now Bajaj is coming with quadricycle, which is great for them.
The JVs with Ashok Leyland have been successful, by bringing the LCV product Dost and it has been a big commercial success, marketing and sales success in India there may be other products coming like this.
“We have our own approach and partnerships. Both are best solutions and you can expect us to continue to work with many people in India and it will be a win-win approach,” said Ghosn.
Growth markets & India way forward.
Some of the high growth markets are going through correction and lots of speculation. Take for instance Europe is going to be tough and has been tough will continue till 2014, recovery wont happen before 2015 post which it will be a moderate growth.
“We are adopting to this situation, in the last 6-7 years in a row the market is going down and going back to 1992 level,” Ghosn, who noted 10 years ago Europe used to contribute 30% of the Global car sales and now its only 15%.
For Renault 45% of the sales was from Europe, so pressure and challenge are very high and high growth markets need to be tapped, for which India will play a key role.
Today business in India small, because volume is less. This year Renault set a target to double its sales to 70,000 units in India, while Nissan is more bullish at about 100,000 units.
Potential is big and we are creating a base thats going to be substantial for the Alliance. India is a proving ground for products going to Indonesia, South and Central America, Africa and other Asian countries.
Fundamentals are strong in high growth markets and one cannot look at for three months results, one should look at the fundamentals, investment in infrastructure, Government emphasis, private enterprise, outside investment coming in and others. “Overall I am very optimistic about the high growth markets time to time we need to adopt the situation and correct our strategy,” said Ghosn.
Learning from India?
Frugal planning or engineering, India is second to none, said Ghosn, who recalled how Dost was born after a casual discussion with Hinduja Group.
“One day when I was visiting their (Ashok Leyland) factory, I asked them how much it cost for transformation and they gave me a number which was may be just five% of what we usually invest in transformation i was shocked i asked him are you sure?.”
This triggered interest and we started working on Dost, said Ghosn, who says frugal planning or engineering, India is second to none.