“Both Superb and Octavia need to come back”

We sat down with Petr Janeba, the new brand director for Skoda Auto India and discussed the upcoming sub four-metre SUV, the brand’s plans for India and more

“THERE MUST BE A SUB FOUR-METRE EV FROM SKODA IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS”

THE MAIN AREAS OF FOCUS

“First is to live and die with the product and the current portfolio of having three cars is definitely not the way we can go forward. I mean there is much more expectation from the customers, dealer partners and shareholders. And it’s not only a product – it’s a competitive product portfolio, in terms of having the right products, with the right features, at the right time, for the right price. Then the second thing is the brand. Part of the product is that there is something we have to do on top for the brand, to make it richer, to make it more desirable, to give it a rich purpose. Because India has a great variety. It is so different that one brand cannot stand for one thing but we still need to make sure that this one brand is standing solid. The third thing is we need to bring intimate quality into our sales processes with our dealer partners and probably start with some innovative ideas. This is like a third pillar which is very important for us to focus on – how to quickly improve the quality because for the new compact SUV, we need to go to more regions.”

Investments that Skoda is making

“We were talking about a 30 per cent capacity expansion in Pune. We are touching the welding shop, assembly line, and some logistics areas and the expansion is going on over the factory holidays. You all can see our financial statement, it’s not a secret that if we make some money – we invest more than double this money. So we are not bringing new cars to India from the profit which we do in India. We are still subsidising it from other countries and other projects because we believe that in the future ecosystem of Skoda, the market which became number three in the world last year has a much bigger role, knowing what is happening in Europe, what happened in China, we sold all our Russia operations last year. So India is our focus and will remain our focus and we will keep on investing not only in manufacturing capacities but also in new products.”

EV or hybrids for the future?

“There is no 100 per cent clarity about the thresholds and the government really will be pushing hard for this target of 30 per cent EVs by 2030. Those of you who are looking at the Volkswagen Group’s overall development will understand that we have platforms and we develop new platforms basically for EVs. We have some mild hybrids, we have some plug-in hybrids. We have on paper even full hybrids. So all these things exist by VW. They are not scaled, they are not localised, they are not decided for India and they will not be decided unless there is a better business case for them than for the EV. So today we focus on EVs only. But once there is any other benefit and business case and feasibility study for any other powertrain including CNG, then we would go for it.”

A Skoda EV

“There must be a sub four-metre EV from Skoda in the next five years. Whether it will be done on this car (upcoming sub four-metre SUV), on this platform or on a completely new EV platform is not yet decided. So there are both options with us.”

The return of Octavia and Superb

“We (board members) discussed that the parts and components of both Superb and Octavia need to come back. The only question is the Octavia’s powertrain. For Superb, it is pretty clear – it’s 2.0-litre but for Octavia, we are still having some discussions about which is the right engine considering the hybrid strategy which is one of the options. The parts and components timeline to bring them here is anything between 12 and 18 months, depends on how much you localise. But this is now in plan.”

Maintaining market share with only three products

“There are still a lot of unused opportunities. It’s a lot about quality in the sales process, in lead management, in funnel management, in network expansion and I think we can definitely cover it. On top, we have some special series with accessories which can help us to bring attention to them and then it’s about the offer.”