India is soon going to be the global production hub for Renault and the Kwid will be one of the cars that will be made in India for the world.
During the recent World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, Renault-Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn announced that India was going to be a global hub for supplying cars worldwide. The Renault-Nissan alliance presently plans on solely following the strategy of local manufacturing for local markets. This change of mind was probably due to the huge success of their small car, Kwid, in the Indian market. The price for the Kwid in India is Rs. 2,60,000/- which roughly amounts to about $3800.
Renault, ever since the launch of the Kwid, had planned on making India the lead market for the small car. There were also plans of suppling some of the car’s parts from India to other plants as well, in due time. Fast forward a year, and the cards have turned, probably based on two notable feats – firstly, keeping manufacturing costs in check for the Kwid, and secondly, fabricating a giant supplier-base in the vicinity of Renault’s Chennai plant that mass produces the Kwid. The company will soon start a third manufacturing shift for its entry level car.
The Alliance thinks there is a lot of potential in India, considering how the car penetration rate in the country is 20 cars per 1000 people. The Alliance, thus, has been working on getting new models across different categories throughout the Indian market. The Kwid is a part of the CMF-A platform which is a small part of the Alliance’s larger CMF strategy. It seems that India is going to be leading the CMF-A platform, considering the number of models that both the companies will be rolling out under it.
Despite the slowdown in China along with oil and commodity volatility being issues that are worrying global car manufacturers, oddly, the Alliance seems to be very optimistic about 2016. Renault and Nissan is still committed to their past declaration of launching a mass-market and a mass-produced electric vehicle by 2020. They also predicted that USA, India and China are going to be the key markets leading to growth of the global automobile industry.
