Ford sells 16,000 Figos in 14 weeks

Twelve years since its entry into India, the 100% subsidiary of American car maker Ford Motor seems to have finally found a firm footing in the auto space.Ford India’s latest compact car launch ‘Figo’ has turned the heat on the auto turf with the company seeing a rapid pick-up in sales. It has delivered 16,000 Figos and has over 21,000 bookings on hand. Within 14 weeks of the new introduction, Ford is already planning to go on second shift from next month.

“We have crossed the total production figure of last year (about 30,200 plus units) a week-and-a-half ago. Our second shift will begin from July to respond to the significant demand,” Ford India president and MD Michael Boneham told reporters, handing over the key to its 1,000th customer of its MPL Ford dealership outlet here on Friday.By second shift operations Ford would be able to reach a capacity of 1.40 lakh units.

While rising input costs may be a cause for concern, Figo is proving to be a competition in the B-segment (price points ranging of Rs 2.1 lakh-Rs 6.2 lakh), that is growing 35% on a year-on-year basis. A clutch of brands such as Wagon R, Swift, Estillo, Alto, Punto, Polo, Spark, Beat, i10 and Micra are vying for a pie of this segment, pegged to be one lakh units.

Before the Figo roll-out, Ford found in a survey that the compact car B-segment constitutes over 70% of the country’s new vehicle market. While it is a tough segment, it has been growing. The interest level is generated by a number of things such as more car aspirants coming into market and new launches, he said.

Attributing Figo’s success to “competitive price positioning,” Mr Boneham said a high degree of localisation has helped the company. In Figo, the localisation levels have touched 85%.The waiting period, depending on dealer position for a Ford Figo is between four and six weeks, he said adding efforts are being directed to reduce the waiting time to less than four weeks.

Ford is also looking at engine exports to Thailand and though volumes are not yet finalised, it is eyeing at a figure of 2,500 to 3,000 engines per month. Similarly, it is planning to export completely-built-units of Figo to South Africa. When pressed, Mr Boneham said “it will happen in the next few weeks. We are looking at new markets too.”It is expanding its dealer footprints and plans to take the count to 200 from the current 166 outlets.

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Source: Auto news

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