Vincent Cobee, global head of the Datsun brand recently shared his concern over the dropping significance of the brand in the eyes of the Indian Customers. It is no surprise that Maruti and Hyundai are the flag bearers of the market share as well as profit generation over voluminous sales of their products. Amidst such a tough competition, Nissan hasn't still managed to make a firm stand in the auto sector as yet. Thus it aims to reinforce modernity, Japanese quality, and styling so as to construct a stable and profitable base in the country's small cars segment, where its sister company, Renault, managed to perform well with its premium compact car Kwid.
Their most recent hit (comparative to other launches), Datsun has also not been able to meet their targetted sales of 2 lakh units in three years. It could only manage to sell 80 thousand units up till now. But all in all, it accounts for 50% cars that Nissan sells. This is the reason the company wishes to update and restyle the car with all new technologies that are faster than others and rarer to find in Indian markets as of now. With this, they would be able to use the already existing name construct of Datsun and create more sales of the car, thus promising profits in the long run.
Carlos Ghosn, the former global CEO of Renault-Nissan, had said, “There is one key element that a car maker needs to have right, and that is the product. No matter how strong the brand is, Indian consumers will discard the product if it is not right. This is the big lesson for us.” The Datsun might look for the newer technologies like connected cars, mild hybrid technology, switch to automatic transmission, level 2 to 3 self-driving abilities or major exterior changes to make it more attractive to the Indian customers.
