Renault Nissan Alliance to launch 4 SUVs in India
DATA FOCUS.
Renault and Nissan have announced their plans to expand their product portfolio in India with four new SUVs in the near future as the French and Japanese companies look forward to driving growth in the country with a renewed approach.
This comes a year after the two companies’ announcement of an additional investment of ₹5,300 crore ($600 million) in the Indian market for developing and producing about halfadozen models both for India and overseas. The alliance has, so far, invested $1.8 billion in Indian operations, which commenced 15 years ago.
The top management of Renault Nissan Alliance, which has completed 25 years of partnership, were in Chennai to discuss their growth plans.
“India will continue to play a key role in our organisation in the future, as India is at the heart of the Alliance’s operations. After the reshaping of the alliance last year, we now apply a more flexible and local projectled approach, which allows for quick and agile decisions that suit regional requirements,” said JeanDominique Senard, Chairman of the Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi Alliance at their car manufacturing factory near Chennai.
Discussing their future growth plans, the top management of the Alliance said it would launch four SUVs – two each under Renault and Nissan brands – in the C segment. The proposed SUVs will include two fiveseater and two sevenseater SUVs. These will be developed out of the CMF (com
Makoto Uchida, President and CEO, Nissan Motor Co; Jean-Dominique Senard, Alliance Chairman, and Luca de Meo, CEO, Renault Group, at Renault-Nissan’s Oragadam facility near Chennai
mon module family)B platform. However, launch periods were not disclosed.
LOCALISATION PUSH
The management asserted that Alliance would continue to focus on heavy localisation
in its vehicles as it has been selling the existing models with more than 90 per cent localisation. “Chennai factory provides us a huge cost advantage,” said Luca De Meo, CEO, Renault Group.
The combined market share of both Renault and Nissan is little less than 2 per cent in the fourmillion Indian passenger vehicle market.
Nissan Magnite and Renault’s Kiger/Triber vehicles were born in India — designed, developed and manufactured in Chennai. “Soon, this family will be expanded with the addition of a new fiveseater / sevenseater car for Nissan,” Makoto Uchida, President and CEO of Nissan Motor Company, Japan, said, adding, ”Our teams are working to introduce alternative energy options, such as CNG and compatibility with ethanol.”
For Nissan, the Chennai factory is also a major export hub and it aims to make the operations a stronger export centre, going forward. “As part of which, India will be a hub for exports at onelakh units level for Nissan during the mid term,” he added.
Globally, 50,841 startup employees were laid off in FY24. India accounts for 9 per cent of those. In FY23, 1.6 lakh startup employees lost jobs across the world. At that time, India’s share was just 6 per cent, even though the layoff numbers in the country were higher. In FY21, India accounted for 21 per cent of global startup layoffs.
Layoffs in Q4 FY24 was at 2,055, slightly lower than the preceding two quarters and half of the peak of 5,566 in Q1 FY24. The firing in Q4 was mainly led by ecommerce platform Flipkart. The company laid off 1,100 people in January 2024.
The numbers appear to be lower with the former unicorn Byju’s taking it easy in sending its employees home. The last layoff session in the company happened in June 2023. There are reports that it may lay off more staff members. However, these numbers may not be completely accurate as a lot of layoffs happen silently and some companies do not reveal the exact number of employees they let go of.
A BETTER PAST
Data shows that there have been better times for the startup ecosystem. Case in point, most quarters of FY22, when the layoffs were almost nil. In FY21, during the pandemic, 16,282 Indian startup employees were given the pink slip. In FY22, during the startup boom and the season of unicorn minting, the numbers dropped to 1,090. However, companies started laying off again in FY23, when funding dried up for startups and promoters were forced to cut back on expenses to reduce their losses. A massive 18,572 people were laid off from Indian startups then.
SITUATION BETTER?
Thillai Rajan, Professor, Department of Management Studies, IITMadras, says that startup layoffs may come down further and the ecosystem will stabilise in the coming few months. “Layoffs too happen in cycles in startups. After a period of mass layoffs, the situation is bound to get better,” he said, adding that the job market too may improve in the coming months.
“Another aspect is that a few startups have dominated layoffs in startups,” he said, hinting at the layoffs at Byju’s. “Since these companies have completed their layoffs, the level has returned to the original state,” he added.