Renault India has plans ot launch five new cars, including an electric car, in the next three years, beginning the 2025 calendar year, which could help the company gain back some of the market shares it lost in 2023. It also seeks to focus on rural markets for its current portfolio, per a senior official.

The company is considering new customers from rural markets for its small car Kwid and utility vehicle Triber, Venkatram Mamillapalle, Country Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Renault India, told businessline adding that the rural market was equally appealing to the company as urban markets.

Renewed expansion

It has launched refreshed versions of the three products that it sells – Kwid, Kiger and Triber – and said new models will come from next year only. It rolled out five new variants across the existing three models and priced between ₹4.69 lakh and ₹10.99 lakh (ex-showroom). With these, the company expects to grow by double-digit growth in its sales this year, he said.

“Our focus will remain on the rural market, where we currently have over 40 per cent share for vehicles like Triber. We want to continue to enhance our rural play… competition is low for Triber because there is no car which matches its features and space,” Mamillapalle said.

He said there is no increase in the prices of these products but there were strictly no discounts on offer. Renault announced ₹5,300 crore investment last year along with its partner Nissan, which it will utilise to expand its markets and new product launches in India.

 “The plan is not yet detailed…it’s in the framing stage. But, there will be five launches – B+ (Mid SUV) and C (big SUV) segments, plus one EV. Post Corona there were issues including semiconductor (shortage) followed by the Russian war and I think the biggest OEM that ever got hit was Renault because we have three plants (four plants with Renault-Nissan alliance otherwise) and we had shut down overnight,” he explained.

Strategic recovery

He further said that there were lack of funds and delayed international investments from the European headquarters. But the group managed the crisis and now was back with its focus on international business, India being an important centre.

“We (Renault India) took a hit in 2023 on volumes, but with a strategy and purpose and we spent all our resources in purchasing engineering changes or developing the new features in these new cars and also controlling inventories for a better cash flow...today we have only 15-20 days of inventories with our dealers (none in the plant), which is best in the industry,” Mamillapalle added.

According to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) data, Renault India has retailed 52,620 units in the 2023 calendar year, a y-o-y decline of 33.28 per cent as compared with 78,868 units in CY’22. The company had a little more than two per cent market share in 2022, which declined to around 1.30 per cent in 2023.

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