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Hyundai Motor India Ltd on Wednesday said that the Indian arm of Hyundai Motor Company, is expected to contribute eight per cent of the company global sales target of five million units by 2010.
HMIL's new managing director, S S Yang said that India was already HMC's largest operations outside Korea. Yang, who had recently moved to HMIL from HMC's operations in China said that the two markets had very similar buyers.
Yang also has the distinction of making Hyundai the largest selling car company in China. He said the previous sales for Hyundai in China was 140,000 units.
He was discussing the company's vision on the sidelines of the Tucson launch in the capital today. Tucson is the first premium SUV from the HMIL stable is priced at Rs 14.3 lakh (Rs 1.43 million) a unit (in Delhi) and will be pitted against Honda CRV, which is currently available at a Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) plus price band.
Though Ford's Endevour is the market leader in this segment selling around 200-250 units a month, HMIL officials said that comparable models in this segment would be Honda CRV and Nissan X-Trail.
While Honda's CRV fetches around 150-200 units a month, HMIL has fixed a more modest target of 125-150 units a month for the Tucson in the initial period.
The 1991-cc Tucson (with a CRDi engine) that will be sold in India would be imported as a completely built unit. As volume move up the company would look into the possibility of switching to importing semi knocked down units. HMIL president B V R Subbu clarified that no plans were on the anvil to launch a petrol version of the Tucson.
He also said that the HMIL's luxury SUV, Terracan would continue to be made available in the Indian market. The average monthly sales of the Terracan at present is 50 units.
"Both (Terracan and Tucson) the models will stay. We are currently selling around 400-500 units of Terracan annually," Subbu said.
Discussing on the company's performance in the financial year 2004-05, Subbu said that HMIL's sales of 224,000 units (including exports) was partly affected by the two-week loss in production due to a fire accident at its plant in Irrungattukottai near Chennai.
"Apart from the fire accident in February we also lost some volume in the first three months of the financial year. But for this, our annual volume could have been in the region of 235,000 units," he said. The company has fixed a target of 260,000 units for the current financial year.
Targetting an improved volume for the current financial year, the company has increased the target of its B-segment offering Santro to 12,000 units a month.
Apart from increasing targets, the company has also started a focused campaign on pushing the Santro as a five-seater car, while some of its competitor's offerings are only four-seaters.
Campaigns in the print and radio compare all five-seater cars in the market with four seater cars from competition. The advertisement are however issued as 'public interest' releases.
Meanwhile, Speaking at the sidelines of the Tucson launch, HMIL's president, BVR Subbu said that the road safety campaign would now move to its next level, with Santro's brand ambassador, Shahrukh Khan promoting a safety campaign on television.
"This was an initiative he has taken himself. The ad will probably tell car owners not to seat children in the front row.
This campaign comes close on heels to the existing campaign on the availability of five seats (and hence five seat belts) in Santro, while some of the other popular B-segment cars have only four seats (and seat belts).