Swaraj Baggonkar Moneycontrol News
Volvo Cars is steadily ramping up its operations in India especially after the inauguration of a sparkling new assembly line in Bengaluru in October followed by the launch of its most popular SUV XC60 last week. Charles Frump, Managing Director, Volvo Cars India shares Volvo’s roadmap and what will it take to double the market share in the face of strong competition from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and Jaguar Land Rover.
Q. The XC60 is already the largest selling model for Volvo globally. How much of volume do you expect it to come from India?
A. Globally the XC60 makes up 30 percent of our volumes and similarly here in India. It could get more than that but at the same time, we have tremendous demand for XC90. The V90 cross country is a niche product but it is beginning to catch on and not far down the line we have the XC40 coming. We are expecting the sales, in general, to go up after the XC60 launch.
Q. What has been the growth rate so far for Volvo?
A. We are coming close to closing the year and we are going to see sales of 2000 cars and that will be a growth of 25 percent compared to last year sales. And 30 percent of those volumes came from just the XC60.
Q. How much of an upside in volumes do you think will there be next year?
A. What we have gone out saying is that by 2020 we want to be at 10 percent market share of the luxury segment from 5 percent now. There needs to be a glide path to increase the share over that time. And new XC60 will play a big part in that. And we are looking at very closely at bringing the XC40 shortly.
Q. You have launched the XC60 with just one variant and no other engine option. Are you open to launching the petrol version?
A. One of the things we are well aware of is shifting towards diesel from petrol. At the moment we see a greater demand for diesel from our customers. The news is that with this car and all our SPA (Scalable Product Architecture) cars we have the engine ready to go – petrol and diesel – and top of that we have hybrids ready to go. Whatever way the market goes we have future-proofed our product plan.
Q. Will the XC60 make its way to the assembly lines in Bengaluru?
A. We kicked off local assembly in Bengaluru in October and that is going extremely well. The cars have gone out to dealers and customers. With that under our belt, we are looking at expanding. And the first cars we are looking at are our SPA cars. We don’t have any specific announcement today but over the next year, you would be certainly hearing more from us on local assembly.
Q. How strong in the luxury SUV market in India?
A. If you compare it with other luxury car markets around the world India’s luxury car share it’s significantly smaller. The luxury car share is between 5-10 percent globally but in India its 2 percent. The luxury market was shocked by demonetisation and by GST but we are on the other side of that now. Now we see things improving from here.
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