Hyundai sold its 400,000th car this
year in India on Tuesday — the highest ever for the company in a year. It
expects to sell about 411,000 cars by the end of December, said Rakesh
Srivastava, vice-president and head (marketing and sales), on Wednesday. So far,
only Maruti Suzuki has achieved that sales milestone in
the country. For Hyundai,
that would be an eight per cent rise in volume over last year.
Next
year, the South Korean car maker aims to increase its annual India sales by a tenth,
helped largely by the launch of new sports utility vehicles (SUVs).
The
vehicle maker has finalised a two-year plan to enter two of the country’s most
promising segments with locally developed products. It will roll out two
compact SUVs by the second half of next year and a multi-purpose vehicle (MPV)
in 2016. The three products will have at least 90 per cent local content.
One of
the SUVs will be positioned as a city rider and aim to take on Renault’s
Duster, Ford’s EcoSport and Mahindra’s Scorpio. The second, likely to be
positioned as an off-roader, is expected to create a new niche. The two SUVs
are likely to have an entry price of Rs 9-10 lakh, said sector sources.
The MPV
will be pitted against Toyota’s Innova, the leader in the segment.
Hyundai Vice-President
Srivastava said: “We will launch a compact SUV next year. We will also bring an MPV, but that will not
be before 2016.” He did not give any details on prices.
Hyundai already has a
premium SUV, the Santa Fe, launched less than 12 months ago. But it has been
able to sell only about under 200 Santa Fes a month. In China, the company has
already unveiled a compact SUV, the Ix 25, at the 2014 Beijing Motor Show. A
production-ready version of the vehicle was showcased at the Guangzhou Auto
Show.
The
company could draw from this model, said Srivastava, but the Indian offering
will be designed to cater to local needs.
Hyundai, though, does not
intend to increase capacity or set up new plants, especially in a market that
has been in the doldrums for the past three years. Instead, Srivastava said,
the company’s strategy has been to shift export orders from India to other
markets in Europe, to create additional capacity without extra investment.
In
2014, Hyundai exported
190,000 cars, compared with 240,000 the previous year. According to Srivastava,
that released for the local market a capacity of 50,000 cars, some of which was
used to produce for the Indian market this year. “We can also scale up our
production capacity from 680,000 vehicles a year to 700,000. So we have enough
capacity to meet the needs for 2015, even as we will be utilising over 98 per
cent of the capacity,” said Srivastava.
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