India to play bigger role in Renault-Nissan’s global plans

In a global media interaction session held at the Tokyo motor show 2015, Renault and Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn revealed that the two companies planned to focus more attention on the Indian market in the next mid-term plan.

India is becoming a major attraction for multinational companies with the market being perceived as one of the most promising among the emerging BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) markets.

“Among the large markets of the world, India is the market with the highest growth in 2015. It will end up seeing a 7-8 percent growth. We think it will continue. We can envision India will be in the top level of growth among the large markets for the next 2-3  years," Ghosn said in response to a query from our sister publication Autocar Professional.

“For all carmakers, India is becoming more and more important because there’s growth and two car manufacturers having 70 percent of market share. So, everybody thinks there’s opportunity here. At least the small guys think they can do a better job. And we are part of the small guys,” added Ghosn.

Renault recently launched the Kwid entry-level hatchback in India, with the small car garnering a lot of interest and bookings for the small car crossing the 25,000 mark within a few weeks of its launch. The CMF-A platform underpinning the hatchback is also expected to spawn a new entry-level model in Nissan’s line-up under the Datsun brand which is likely to be launched in India in March 2016 to celebrate the brand’s anniversary. Nissan is also learnt to be tweaking its strategy for the Indian market the results of which are expected to kick in, over the coming three to four years.

Ghosn also said that since the global automobile industry’s growth was expected to reach stagnation in the coming years, the two companies were looking to enhance its efforts in India and South Africa and also look towards developing newer markets.