Kia Motors eyes a big pie of PV market in India with Hyundai

Kia Motors India, the local arm of the Korean carmaker, sees sister brand Hyundai as a competitor in the country, at least in the near to short term. In the long term, though, it has ambitions to take a large pie in India’s passenger vehicle market together with Hyundai, the company’s managing director and chief executive officer, Kookhyun Shim, told Business Standard.

“We have very little production-related synergies with Hyundai as of now. We are competitors. But we want to grow together in this market in the long term,” said Shim.

Kia Motors is minority owned by Hyundai, which holds a 33.88 per cent in the company. Kia, in turn, is a minority owner of more than twenty Hyundai subsidiaries ranging from 4.9 per cent to 45.37 per cent. Globally, the two have been leveraging each others’ technology, product platforms and production facilities. 

On Thursday, Kia entered the competitive mid-size SUV segment in the country with Seltos. With prices starting from Rs 9.69 lakh and going up to Rs 15.99 lakh, Kia has pitted the Seltos against the Hyundai Creta, Renault Captur, Nissan Kicks and MG Hector.

The company claims it has received bookings of over 32,000 units in a month’s time. Available in both petrol and diesel with manual and automatic transmissions, the Seltos is BSVI compliant and boasts of as many as 16 variants.