The performance driving academy at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, has met with tremendous response, Mitra said. “It will be held on two days every quarter. But before the launch, we had no idea that it would get such a good response. Looking at this, we can scale up the number of days,” he said, adding that by having such programmes; Mercedes-Benz is also trying to get synonymous as a brand that makes performance cars and not just luxury vehicles.

In another initiative, the German carmaker will have a C63 AMG car at every showroom so that every customer can experience it.The company has recored a growth of about 30 per cent over 2010 and is targeting a substantial double digit growth this year. But there has been a change in buying trends and it is not just the big cities like Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore that is seeing sales of premium and luxury cars.Mitra said that the trend has been that Benz has been selling a lot of cars in the smaller cities also.“Our strongest sales are in the West, North and followed by the South. But cities like Nashik, Karnal, Lucknow, Jaipur, Surat, Baroda, Bhubaneshwar, Vijayawada, Coimbatore and Calicut. In fact, Aurangabad has seen massive sales of Benz cars,” he said.

Replying to a question, he said the other problem automakers like Benz are facing is that of government policy.“Now, there are talks that diesel vehicles will be taxed more. As a manufacturer, we invest a lot of time in developing technologies and we can’t change things overnight. There needs to be stability in direction of policies,” he stated.Outlining future introductions from the Mercedez-Benz line-up, Mitra said: “The B Class should be out by the end of 2012, A Class in 2013 and the SUVs by 2014. By 2014-15, the entire line-up should be in India.”

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Source:www.dnaindia.com  2/2/12

Sudhir Rao has studied in India and US apart from which he has broad knowledge of the auto sector be it national or international markets. Having worked both in India, Europe and the US, Rao has an all-round knowledge of the markets and Skoda Auto India is sure to gain from this experience.

Before this, Mr Rao held the post of Renault India Deputy MD, from which he resigned earlier this year. At that time, Mr Rao stated, “I have decided to move on from Renault as the primary objective for which I came to the company, which was to create a new phase for Renault in India, has been achieved. It is, therefore, time to move on to other challenges.”

India is an important market for Skoda Auto. The company aims to increase global sales to at least 1.5 million units per annum. Sales in India too have increased by 50% during 2011 where the company sold 30,000 vehicles. One of Skoda’s newest car, Rapid is produced in Pune and it is with sales of this vehicle that the company hopes to strengthen their reach in India.

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Source: www.rushlane.com 31/1/12

Hyundai Motors in fact matched market estimates at a time when the global economy is on the verge of another recession. Mr Ahn Se-hwan, Auto Analyst, IBK Securities, said, “The industry had no doubt that Hyundai would have a good year. A lot of factors including the won-dollar exchange rate, and growing brand reputation in emerging markets worked in favor of the carmaker. Hyundai is achieving some cost cuts from integrating their production platforms. More vehicles will go through the streamlined version of their platforms in the future and further increase their performance.”

In 2011, Hyundai and its affiliate Kia Motors sold 4.05 million cars globally and now the South Korean car maker is aiming at selling a staggering 7 million cars this year. Mr Chung Mong-koo, Chairman, Hyundai Motors said, “In order to achieve the 7 million target, we have to keep up with fast-changing global trends by setting up an organized cooperation system for better communication among our production facilities and sales locations across the world.”

Hyundai is also working on a strategy to take on Europe’s largest car manufacturer, Volkswagen. Riding on the newly launched i40 and 3 door Velostar, Hyundai aims to increase their European sales by 25% by 2013. Their factories have started working on a third shift in order to increase production. According to Jessica Caldwell, Analyst, Edmunds.com, “Hyundai offers compelling design at an affordable price– a win-win for most consumers. Brand exposure has long been the problem for Hyundai, but that has certainly eased.” Mr Richard Sanders, MD, Drivethedeal.com adds, “People just seem to trust VW more. But that’s changing. There’s nothing wrong with Hyundai product anymore.”

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Source: www.rushlane.com 27.1.12

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Source:www.gas2.org  26/1/12

At the Auto Expo that ended in Delhi on Wednesday, this was acknowledged in various forms at the stands of carmakers such as Maruti, Hyundai Motor India Ltd and BMW India Pvt. Ltd.The Maruti pavilion allowed visitors to register a Facebook “like” by using fingerprint IDs.Hyundai used a “buzz” card rather than a fingerprint to get instant feedback. Visitors could also upload technical specifications to their Facebook pages and share them with friends in real time.

BMW India registered visitors with a connect card that could exchange information with their Facebook pages when tapped against an AppleiPad attached to each model on display.Apart from data on the car, users could get their photos shot and uploaded on Facebook immediately.“It’s a very cost-effective tool,”?said Christian Saffer, director, marketing, BMW India. “It’s much cheaper than placing an advertisement in a newspaper.”

For volume car makers such as Maruti and Hyundai, the process creates a database of potential customers. The method is more effective than a traditional survey, with visitors able to express themselves better.
“Social media is a very engaging medium,” said Shashank Srivastava, chief general manager, Maruti. “It helps get feedback on both products and services and in making a reputation online.”For Hyundai, social media is critical because it targets younger people.“We have a lot of young customers and most are hooked to the social media in some way or the other,”?said Arvind Saxena, director, sales and marketing, Hyundai. “It’s important that we talk in their language to connect with them.”

Moreover, social media has a multiplier effect when it comes to the dissemination of information, he said.Companies have been raising the amount of money they spend on the medium. Maruti spent 8% of its total Rs.200 crore advertising and marketing budget on digital media in the year ended March 2011.This percentage?has been doubling each year and is expected to be 16% by the end of the current fiscal year, Srivastava said.

Hyundai’s expenditure on the medium has gone up to 8% from 2-3% three years ago. “Compared to advanced markets like the UK, we as a country are still not very digitized, but the direction is very clear,” Srivastava said.According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the number of Internet users crossed 100 million in late 2011, thanks in part to the increasing sales of smartphones. Facebook currently has 38 million users in India.Automobiles are a high-involvement product category and with buyers belonging to the upper-income, Net-savvy segment, the use of digital media will rise further, said Pradeep Saxena, executive director, TNS Automotive, a market research and sales forecasting firm.

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Source: www.livemint.com 11/1/12

For an automaker with 166,000 workers worldwide and a history of riding boom into bust, the slogan is intended in part as a warning against complacency after three years of profits, executives say.”Go Further” will be used in marketing campaigns, replacing “Drive One” in North America and “Feel the Difference” in Europe. Those slogans were coined to help overcome wariness on the part of consumers about the quality and performance of Ford cars as the car maker bounced back.”We are at a different point now in our company’s history,” Jim Farley, global head of sales and marketing, told Reuters.

Ford is not the only automaker that has relied heavily on a catchy slogan. Crosstown rival Chrysler, now under the control of Italy’s Fiat SpA (FIA.MI), has played up both sides of its heritage with the year-old “Imported from Detroit.”

At General Motors Co (GM.N), former CEO Ed Whitacre was amazed in 2009 that the automaker did not have a slogan that reflected a mission statement, so he supplied one: “Design, build and sell the world’s best vehicles.”

But Ford, founded in 1903, has a particularly long history of using slogans meant to resonate both inside its glass-walled Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters and outside with customers. Its sloganeering goes back at least as far as 1914′s “Ford: The Universal Car.”For the past five years, Chief Executive Alan Mulally, 66, has driven Ford’s turnaround under the global slogan “One Ford.” The motto underscored the need to unify the automaker’s operations and put an end to executive infighting.In the latest evidence that the plan worked, Ford is due to report its 11th consecutive quarterly net profit on January 27. In December, the automaker announced it would begin paying a dividend for the first time since 2006, after moving within a notch of regaining an investment grade credit rating.

Farley insists the new slogan is not a replacement for “One Ford,” which he said is a motto that reflects the automaker’s core global strategy. And although Ford plans to use “Go Further” to market new vehicles around the world this year, the phrase is also meant to motivate its employees.”We really see it as kind of documenting the culture or the DNA of the company,” he said.

Farley said Ford looked at the success of “Just Do It” for Nike and “I’m Lovin’ It” at McDonald’s in crafting its new slogan.One expert said that, while Ford’s slogan would resonate for employees who know what the company has been through in recent years, it would not deliver the same kind of message to outsiders.”I don’t think it’s that good. It’s a little too inside the industry,” said Jim Wangers, a marketing analyst in Oceanside, California.

In the late 1960s, Ford tried to rally baby boomers around the slogan, “Ford has a better idea,” using the image of a lightbulb to signal inspiration instead of the “o” in Ford.In the 1980s, when Ford was scrambling to counter inroads into the U.S. market by Japanese rivals led by Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), the automaker rolled out the slogan, “Quality is Job 1.”In early 2006, Ford dubbed a wrenching restructuring, “The Way Forward.” The plan involved closing 14 plants and cutting more than 25,000 jobs. Some workers joked at the time that it looked more like a giant step backward.

When Mulally arrived later that year, he tapped into the company’s history of sloganeering with “One Ford.” Mulally even insisted that all workers be issued laminated cards with the turnaround motto: “One Ford, One Team, One Plan, One Goal.”Mulally introduced the “Go Further” slogan to Ford’s employees around the world in a New Year’s message. The slogan is already being used in advertisements and on Facebook for Ford in Europe. It will be introduced in markets from India to North America later this year.

Justin Wartell, head of brand strategy for Interbrand of Dayton, Ohio, said the challenge for Ford will be to make the slogan concrete in a way that makes sense to consumers.”Any automaker can use that,” Wartell said of the new slogan. “What makes it Ford? What makes it stand out?”

Elena Ford, Ford’s global director of marketing and the great-great granddaughter of founder Henry Ford, said the new slogan was essentially a reminder to employees that they had to set the bar higher after recent gains. Her way of describing that could itself be turned into a slogan.”We go further so you can,” she said.

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Source: www.in.reuters.com  24/1/2012

KTM, Europe’s second largest motorcycle maker, sold 81,200 units globally in 2011 with 18,000 units in US as its lead market, France with 8,500 and Germany with 7,800 units. “Bajaj (Auto) expects to sell 2,000 to 3,000 KTM bikes every month in India (24,000-36,000 yearly),” Trunkenpolz said. The company plans to sell 2,00,000 units globally by 2015, of which the major share is expected to come from India.

Bajaj Auto that owns 39.26 per cent stake in KTM will sell the model alongside Ninja super bikes from Bajaj’s premium pro-biking showrooms across the country. Bajaj’s premium motorcycles such as Pulsar and Avenger will thus stop being sold through the pro-biking network set up by Bajaj Auto in 2003. With the launch of KTM, the 34 pro-biking showrooms across the country will now be renamed as KTM stores and will also sell KTM’s merchandise and accessories.

“What Pulsar was in 2001, KTM is today. Bajaj and KTM will fill most requirements of motorcyclists,” said Rajiv Bajaj, managing director of Bajaj Auto. “Our own conviction about KTM is that it is a matter of time that it becomes the world’s largest selling premium motorcycle brand,” Bajaj added. The off-road Duke 200 priced at Rs 1,17,500 (ex-showroom, New Delhi), falls into a niche segment between Japanese sport bikes such as 150 cc Yamaha R15 (Rs 1.07 lakh) and Honda’s 250 cc CBR 250R (Rs 1.43 lakh). The Duke has a rigid suspension and will appeal to riders that are ‘young at heart’, according to the company. However, company officials refused to reveal the mileage of the Duke 200.

Trunkenpolz said Bajaj and KTM would together develop joint motorcycle platforms for future models. KTM plans to double exports from India to about 22,000 units this year with new markets including Indonesia, Philippines and Brazil. It exported 11,000 motorcycles in 2011 including Duke 125 and Duke 200 models produced at Chakan plant. KTM plans to launch six to seven new models in next two years, globally.

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Source:www.mydigitalfc.com 24/1/2012

Elsewhere, Maruti Suzuki redesigned one of its models, the Swift hatchback, based on customer comments on sites like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter, such as criticisms about its “plasticky” interior.Social media now takes 8% of the firm’s advertising and marketing spend – standing at Rs200 crore ($39m) annually – over the 12 months to March 2011. This total should reach 16% by the end of the fiscal year.Shashank Srivastava, chief general manager, Maruti, told : “Social media is a very engaging medium. It helps get feedback on both products and services and in making a reputation online.”"Compared to advanced markets like the UK, we as a country are still not very digitized, but the direction is very clear.”

Hyundai, the Korean automaker, also dedicates 8% of its communications expenditure to social channels, a figure which has grown from 2–3% just three years ago.”We have a lot of young customers and most are hooked to social media in some way or the other,” Arvind Saxena, director, sales and marketing, Hyundai, said. “It’s important that we talk in their language to connect with them.”At the Auto Expo 2012, BMW, the high-end marque, gave visitors a digital card linked to their Facebook account. Visitors could then use this card to log in to Facebook via iPad devices made available at BMW’s stand, and post updates and photos from the event.”It’s a very cost-effective tool,” said Christian Saffer, director, marketing, BMW India. “It’s much cheaper than placing an advertisement in a newspaper.”

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Source:Livemint 13/1/12

As many as 2.04 million vehicles were produced in India till June this year, 20 per cent higher than the 1.71 million units rolled out in Brazil.China continued to be the frontrunner with production of 9.16 million units till June, while India’s share in vehicle production, as compared to China, has improved sharply between January and June this year.While last year, India produced a sixth of the number of vehicles rolled out in China, till June this year the country produced more than a fifth of the number of vehicles manufactured in east Asian nation. India’s market share in global vehicle production moved up marginally to five per cent from the earlier 4.5 per cent during this period.

PricewaterhouseCoopers says India is likely to produce seven million light vehicles of up to five tonnes by 2017. “Though vehicle sales have slowed down this year, the fundamentals remain strong,” notes Abdul Majeed, partner and head of automotive practice in the global professional services firm. “By 2017, India is likely to emerge as the third-largest market in the world after China and the US.”What is boosting business confidence is that despite the economic uncertainties prevailing in global and domestic markets, India remained among the fastest-growing automobile markets in the world till October this year. While US topped the charts growing by 10.1 per cent to sell 10.54 million vehicles, Germany and India followed close behind growing by around eight per cent (to 2.93 mn units) and 7.8 per cent (to 2.73 mn units), respectively.

Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers notes that the vehicle penetration in India is one of the lowest in the world — at 10 cars per 1000 people as against 565 cars and 453 cars per 1000 people in Germany and the US respectively. “So,” says Sugato Sen, senior director of the association “ the market will only grow over long term.”Estimates available with market research firm J D Power show the automobile market in India is set to grow three-fold to sell over 11 million vehicles by 2020.If we take a closer look at the sales data of the top six vehicle-manufacturing countries in the world currently, the domestic automobile market in India has already overgrown that of Korea at 2.73 million units. Till October, the Korean market had grown by 2.8 per cent to sell 1.23 million units. Vehicles sales in the country have fallen short of Germany (the fourth largest automobile market) by mere 200,000 units.

On the exports front, India stands at around a tenth of the 3.77 mn units exported by Germany till October this year. What is intriguing is that India is fast narrowing the gap with China. Till October this year China (which accounts for 24 per cent of global automobile production) exported only 703,341 units, while Indian exports grew by 17.45 per cent to 489,675 units.Japan fared the worst in the current year hit by the earthquake and tsunami in March this year. While vehicle production dropped by a whopping 17 per cent to 6.71 million units due to insufficiency in supply of components, domestic sales declined by 20 per cent to 3.47 mn units between Jan and October this year.

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Source: BS 25/12/11

“The overall luxury market growth dominated by the big three – BMW, Mercedes Benz and Audi – should be in the region of around 50% this year,” says Vidur Talwar, MD, T&T Motors. “The growth was much better in the first six months of the year but has been much lower since August.”Although the luxury segment isn’t as sensitive to inflation as the mass market cars, the overall downturn in sentiment has hit demand. “Since 75% of luxury cars are now financed, increasing interest rates have hit demand,” says Talwar. “Also, most luxe car buyers are also real estate buyers and that’s where the interest pinch hurts more. The rupee depreciation has also pinched.” and the overall sentiment is not as buoyant as last year. All of that has added up,” he says.

The good news, though, is that a couple of strategic launches have revitalised the luxe market and the nearly 50% trot would not have happened otherwise. BMW’s super successful X1 SAV (sports activity vehicle) hit the sweet spot and is likely to sell around 2,500-3,000 units this year. Without the X1′s contribution, the entire luxe market would have managed only about 30% growth. Add to that Audi’s successful Q5, which along with other stable mates like the Q7, has helped the company give an excellent performance even in a lacklustre month like November.

Rakesh Batra, head of Ernst & Young’s automobile practice in India, says, “The luxury car market seems to have bucked the downturn and this is as true of automobiles as of other luxury products. But, in cars the growth has come on what is still a very small base, so when car companies have launched new products, the market has grown. Also this segment is less affected by the general economic environment, so it’s easier for it to buck the downturn.

“Audi’s 5,117 unit sales from January-November has helped it surpass its annual sales target for the year in the first 11 months, registering 83% growth. In November, it clocked 66% growth selling 425 cars compared to 256 last November. In comparison, market leader BMW and archrival Mercedes Benz have more modest growth rates, though still leagues ahead of the mass market brands. Mercedes Benz India was ‘positive’ in the second half of 2011, clocking 31% growth year-on-year in the January-November period with 6,698 units, up from 5,110 units last year. BMW, which hasn’t announced November numbers yet, clocked 8,042 units in the January-October period, a growth of 70%.

Even super luxury brands like Rolls Royce expect a decent performance this year, clocking over 100 cars while Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover is expected to clock around 1,300 units, up from just under 900 units last year.Auto marketers say the push towards tier-2 markets has helped luxe brands survive the downturn. While Audi is branching out to markets like Coimbatore and Lucknow, Mercedes Benz has expanded its network to cities like Raipur & Nashik. In November, the company inaugurated new facilities in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Ludhiana and Mumbai. Getting into leasing business and pre-owned cars has also helped boost demand.

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Source:TOI  8/12/11