In March
2005, Nissan entered India with the Nissan Renault Alliance setting up a
production facility in Oragadam near Chennai, Tamil Nadu. With Nissan
completing 10 successful years in India we had a lot of questions for Nissan
India’s recently appointed President Guillaume Sicard. We asked him about the
progress of the Datsun brand in the country, the prospects of electric vehicles
in India, new launches from the Nissan stable and what we could expect from
Nissan in the near future for the Indian market. Besides, we also sought his
views on the electric Leaf, the X-Trail, Teana, and the all mighty GT-R. We caught up with him at the Nissan carnival
at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida.
Report: Rahul
Kapoor; Photography: Mohd. Nasir
Nissan
celebrates ten years in India; we know it’s only been about six months since
you took charge, could you tell me briefly about how Nissan’s journey has been from
your experience in India?
Well,
it has been quite an incredible journey in the last ten years. We have set up a
Research and Development Centre, we are employing 5,000 engineers. We have
implemented a plant with 8,000 people working to manufacture our cars and we
have set up a full marketing company only a year ago so it’s been quite an
adventure. Today, if you see the setup we have, we are employing directly or
indirectly 40,000 people so it has been quite an adventure for us from a
business perspective.
In the 2015
Union Budget, the government has given some priority to electric mobility. Nissan
Leaf has been a huge success globally, could we expect the Leaf anytime soon in
India?
I think the Nissan Leaf which is the most sold and
manufactured car in the world with the electric technology, we would like to
bring it to India. This is one of the best cars in the world; we would really
love to have this car in India. I think we are listening to what the government
is proposing today. I think the budget has got some small announcements about
promoting the electric car so [I Say} let’s keep on working, and I would like
Nissan to definitely get involved into selling the Nissan Leaf in India.
With the
Nissan-Renault Alliance, most of the cars from both Nissan and Renualt line up
are internally the same, like the Terrano and the Duster, the Micra and the
Pulse, the Sunny and the Scala. Is the cross badging formula working for you?
How has the response been in India and globally?
I think what is really important is that at the
beginning, everybody is learning. I think it is very important to consider that
both companies are competing independently from a marketing point of view and
both companies will be competing independently in the car point of view also. We
have a lot of things in common from a financial point of view, so a lot of
thing you will see underneath the car, like the platform, the engine, the
gearbox, are going to come into the alliance. However the body from now on will
be completely different. So you will not be able to guess anymore. But in the
automotive industry, there are many cars that are exactly the same car
underneath, have the same engine but the skin and the brand are completely
different. You know the brands I’m talking about, we are going into that
direction as well.