Renault-Nissan’s Indian journey hasn’t been as smooth as the French-Japanese alliance expected. While sales were good initially, most models of the company have seen a big decline in demand and both automakers are relying on just a few vehicles for keeping operations afloat in the green. The products from the company aren’t bad at all, in fact there are some very good products too but the high competition in all the segments has led to both Renault and Nissan losing market share.
In India, most car makers are able to sell their hatchbacks in decent numbers but that’s not the case with Renault and Nissan whose Pulse and Micra are doing poorly. The Pulse is nothing but a badge engineered Micra, with the latter having an upper hand as it was given a facelift last year. That’s the reason why Nissan sold 812 units of the Micra last month while Renault sold just 175 units of the Pulse.
Those sales are nothing to talk about as this was in the festive season, if we look back to September, then the sales of the Pulse are even worst with just 54 units being sold. Even cars like the Skoda Octavia and Hyundai Santa Fe which operate in higher segments and come via the CKD route outsell the Pulse easily. There have been many months in this year where the Pulse hasn’t even managed to sell 100 units a month, that’s very poor sales for what is Renault’s entry-level car in India.
In order to promote the Pulse (and even the Scala), Renault is now offering the diesel model for the price of the petrol version which will lead to heavy savings for buyers. This deal does seem to be a good one because people no longer are very inclined to pay the extra amount for a diesel car due to the narrowed fuel price between petrol and diesel fuels. Still, such offers keep coming and going but they do little to change the fate of the Renault Pulse.
