LIFESTYLE: This is the first time the Volvo Ocean Race will come to India.
On December 3, seven yachts racing against each other from Cape Town will dock at the Kochi port. After ten days, when the sailors have rested and feasted, the race will start again and the yachts will set sail for Singapore.
This is the first time the Volvo Ocean Race will come to India in the 35 years that it has been around – it started out in 1973 as the Whitbread Round the World Race.
All of a sudden, Kochi finds itself on the sailing map of the world. Kerala Tourism and the Cochin Port Trust will together spend around Rs 30 crore to host the yachts, sailing enthusiasts and the media during those ten days – the event will reach 1.8 billion viewers spread across 180 countries.
Naturally, the authorities have decided to leave nothing to chance. The berths at the port are being given a facelift. Once the yachts have left and the carnival is over, cruise liners will be able to drop anchor there. Traditional boats will be commandeered for races to entertain the tourists. Houseboats from the backwaters of Kerala too will make an appearance.
The organisers of the race had visited several touch points in West Asia but settled on Kochi, the jewel of the Malabar. Their decision could have been influenced by the fact that earlier this year in March Volvo Cars made its foray into India.
In the first year, it hopes to sell 500 cars in the country – its three dealers in Delhi, Chandigarh and Bangalore have sold 100 so far.
Volvo, which is owned by Ford, competes with Mercedes, BMW and Audi in India. While these brands have established strong brand equity in the country through aggressive ad campaigns, Volvo is a newcomer. (Though in Russia, a market not very dissimilar to India, the company claims it sells more than all its rivals.)
Volvo Car India’s Dutch managing director, Paul de Voijs, who likes most things Indian, feels the best way his car sales can grow here is when word spreads through word-of-mouth about the Volvo experience. The Volvo Ocean Race is another attempt at brand-building.
It is one of the top sailing events of the world and tests men and yachts to the extreme. This edition of the race will start from Alicante in Spain on October 4 and end at St Petersburg on 27 June next year. During this time, the teams will cover 39,000 nautical miles and touch down at 11 ports. This is the longest edition ever of the race.
Each yacht will have a crew of ten and, for the first time, a neutral embedded journalist. Some of the legs will extend to more than 20 days and the sailors will have to negotiate their way through gales, storms, ocean debris, icebergs and whales.
The event is expected to attract well-heeled sailing connoisseurs from all over – some of them could be potential customers for Volvo cars priced between Rs 38 lakh and Rs 54 lakh.
For this kind of price, owners can expect the usual gizmos and really advanced technology like a self-cleaning diesel particle filter that heats itself to very high temperature and burns off the deposit into harmless dust every once in a while. All that an owner needs to do is to take the car out for a short spin.
The growing Indian market for luxury cars caught Volvo’s attention for the first time in 2004. That is when it sent Paul de Voijs for a reconnaissance. Things started moving two years back when Volvo, to test out its machines in India before launching, sent two cars to be driven 100,000 km each.
The main issue was: Would Volvo’s sophisticated engines endure local diesel for long? In other countries, such a 100,000-km test drive takes about four months.
In India, it took closer to a year – partly because one of the cars even tried to push a truck off the road and also because the company had to fly in the synthetic lubricant that its cars guzzled. But, at the end of it, no damage was found in the engines, except the tyres, but that can be blamed on Indian roads. Volvo knew it had the right machines for India.
