In an exclusive interview to The Pioneer on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Datsun brand beginning sales in India, Guillaume Sicard, President Nissan India Operations spoke about the journey of the brand and their future plans to Kushan Mitra
How have sales for the Datsun Go and Go+ been so farIJ
We should be crossing sales of 20,000 units in a few weeks, which I personally believe is remarkable for a new brand in India. Also, in our segment of the affordable small car market we have managed to garner a three per cent marketshare. When you consider Maruti has a 70 per cent share and Hyundai 22 per cent, we are now the third-largest, but still very small and the challenge this year will be to make that three into four, five and six per cent.
Was it particularly difficult to launch a new brand in IndiaIJ
It was indeed. When we did a survey before launch we discovered that only two percent of Indian buyers had heard for Datsun, whereas almost everyone knew Maruti and Hyundai. I believe we have managed to get the Datsun brand awareness much higher now and we have been helped immensely by Ayushmann Khurana, the Bollywood actor and our brand ambassador in getting the message across to even more buyers. But I believe that our message that we have a profound respect for tradition yet offer a modern brand has been very successful.
You have a new ‘smaller’ car that will be launched soon, can you share some details of that productIJ
Yes, this will be on a whole new platform that is being developed for India and primarily by engineers based out of India. Yes, since this is a new platform for the Renault-Nissan alliance, there are engineers in Japan and France working on it as well. It will be an all-new car with a new body, platform and engine and we believe that it will excite the Indian buyer.
How are you expanding your reach in IndiaIJ
Datsun cars are sold alongside Nissan products and currently we have 170 points of sale across India and by the end of March 2017 we hope to have over 300 dealerships across India, which we feel will cover 98 per cent of the country.
What innovations are you doing in the digital sphere to reach out to new customersIJ
Well, we have come out with a new ‘Happy Birthday’ song composed by our brand ambassador and we are allowing ‘fans’ of Datsun to go tour YouTube page from the 14th of April onwards and they can request for a special song to be written for them on certain themes. This is open to only around 400 ‘fans’ and we shall record a song specially for them and mail it to them the next day.