Nissan puts Hover fiasco behind, eyes turnaround

August 01, 2014 11:37 pm | Updated November 16, 2021 06:35 pm IST - CHENNAI:

Andy Palmer

Andy Palmer

Japanese auto maker Nissan’s upcoming new small car will be positioned below the Datsun Go, according to a top official of the company.

The Nissan brand in India is gearing up for a new growth trajectory after revamped dealer business, supported by the upcoming new products.

“Our plan to launch a car based on CMF-A (common module family-A) platform is on track, and the first model will be launched under Datsun brand. It will positioned below Go,” Andy Palmer, Chief Planning Officer, Nissan Motor Co Ltd., told The Hindu.

“The momentum we have now in India looks very promising. The turning point for us is the new NSC (national sales company), and multiplied by the launch of Sunny face-lift. This seems to be the inflexion point,” he added.

Mr. Palmer admitted that the company failed in its first-ever outsourced sales model adopted for the Indian market as the performance of Nissan models were disappointing. Terming it as a costly mistake, he said Nissan had lost almost a year of growth and momentum on account of breaking away from the sales partnership with Hover. “We probably lost 12 months of growth … that is an estimate. Ideally, we should have completed 98 per cent of the market coverage by next year. But, we will achieve this by 2016,” he added.

Mr. Palmer said the company had learnt from its mistakes in the Indian market, and was set to scale a new growth curve. “In the case of Evalia, it was designed and developed in the context of our earlier distribution relationship. But features and specifications we did were not right. We have learnt our lessons, and corrected,” he added. To a question, he said there won’t be any major change in the company’s medium-to-long term plans for India. “Probably, we will have more products coming than what we originally anticipated. We also thought Indian market will predominantly be petrol manual market. But we learnt it will have very heavy mix of diesel and bigger share of automatic transmissions,” he said.

Mr. Palmer said Nissan saw much more confidence levels among the dealers now as they felt the market was picking up. Nissan’s market share and growth were good in the first quarter of this fiscal, he added.

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