Japanese carmaker Nissan today halved its market share target in India to 5 per cent by 2020, for which it will launch one new model each year.
The company, which today unveiled a compact car redi-GO under the Datsun brand that will hit markets in June, had earlier set a target of achieving 10 per cent market share in India by 2016.
"We are a young brand here. What we can say is that it was somewhat an ambitious target (10 per cent by 2016), but we are now in a position to achieve this 5 per cent share by 2020 with the kind of standing and product portfolio we have now," Nissan India Operations President Guillaume Sicard told PTI.
It takes time to understand and crack the Indian market, he added.
"India is the most challenging market in the world to penetrate. It is tough to crack. The market is still dominated by traditional top two players which have over 65 per cent market share," Sicard said.
In 2014, when Nissan launched the Datsun Go in India, marking the global comeback of the brand after nearly three decades, it had said it was aiming to garner 10 per cent share in the Indian passenger vehicles market by 2016.
However, last year, it had clarified that it would miss its target, but will advance the launch of a third vehicle from its Datsun brand in the country to propel growth.
"When global OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) enter Indian market, they think if you price a product well you can be successful. But very quickly you understand it's not about price, but value. So, our learning here is that it's not a price-driven market, but value-driven market," Sicard said.
It is not easy to enhance awareness in the country quickly owing to its great size, he added. Nissan so far sold only around 45,000 Datsun vehicles in the country.
Asked about the company's plans to achieve the sales target by 2020, Sicard said: "For Nissan, we will focus on bringing products from the global portfolio. We have already announced to introduce hybrid X-Trail and GTR here. Under the Datsun brand, we would launch new products. We will have one new product every year from the Nissan group."
Redi-GO is the company's third vehicle from the Datsun brand in India and has come up on a fresh platform developed in India.
The company, however, did not announce the price of the car that will compete with the likes of Maruti Suzuki Alto and Hyundai's Eon, which are priced between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 4.42 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).
"The bookings for the model would start in May and deliveries would begin in June," Nissan Motor India MD Arun Malhotra said.
Last year, the automaker had launched a compact multi-
purpose vehicle Go+ to add to the Go small car to expand its network in small towns to boost sales of its Datsun brand of vehicles.
Commenting on the network expansion in the country, Malhotra said: "Our focus has been to be close to the customer. Currently, we have 217 dealerships across 165 cities. By March-end, we aim to have 300 touch points."
The company also plans to come up with a financing scheme so that more and more customers could buy Datsun vehicles, he added.
