Struggling for years, Renault, Nissan, Tata see a slow revival

Car companies that stood little chance to win the battle in India against dominant players Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motors have begun to sniff a chance, a slow revival after years of struggle.

In the last few months, including August, Tata Motors, which has had almost a decade of falling market-share, as well as Renault and Nissan, are seeing sales rise.

Renault has had a runaway success with its entry-level Kwid, and is manufacturing 10,000 units every month. In August, sales grew five-fold over the last year to 12,972 units. This was the best month for the French carmaker since it started India operations in 2005.

Nissan, Renault’s parent company, is also seeing rise in sales. The car maker has a two-prong strategy with Datsun serving the entry-level buyer, and Nissan for the more mature buyer.

“Datsun will be targeted to people who are upgrading to a car from a two-wheeler market… focusing on larger portion of the market, at least for the next few years,” said Guillaume Sicard, president of Nissan India.

Nissan and Datsun together sold 5,918 cars in August. The numbers will rise as the company is sorting out supply chain issues at its plant for the production of RediGo, a rival for Maruti Alto and WagonR (sales of which have declined by 5.8%).

“Kwid has changed India’s small-car story... and Tiago is slowly changing Tata’s brand image from a taxi maker,” said Amit Kaushik, India head of London-based automative analyst firm Jato Dynamics.

Tata Motors calls Tiago a “bridge product”.

“Tiago has put Tata Motors back on the consideration list. We call it bridge product, as it has fuelled confidence within the organisation,” said Guenter Butschek, CEO of Tata Motors Worldwide.