Daewoo Motors India hopes to double sales

agencyfaqs! News Bureau

CHENNAI, August 28

Daewoo Motors India Ltd. (DMIL) has set some very optimistic targets for itself this year. The company hopes to double its sales by end 2001 from 40,000 units last year, and expects the market to grow by at least 15 per cent.

This despite the recent rise in global oil prices. Briefing newsmen at a press conference in the city recently, DMIL chairman S.G. Awasthi said the Indian market had in the past shown strong demand growth even when petrol and diesel prices had shot up. Those looking to buy cars would not reverse their decision even if fuel prices went up, he added.

"India is a very resilient market," he said dispelling fears that rising oil prices would hit fresh car purchases in India, which mainly depends on fuel imports.

Awasthi said Daewoo targeted sales of 80,000 cars in the current fiscal, most of which would be in the 800 cc Matiz model, on the back of a fresh product and pricing strategy that sought to maximize the price-value equation.

Referring to the past strategy when Daewoo India placed a price premium on its models over competition, Awasthi said the company had gone through "a learning curve" and had shifted to "an aggressive pricing strategy" over time.

The company plans to reinforce its new strategy with the introduction of two new variants of the Matiz. The two new variants, the Matiz SG and the Matiz SA, fitted with power steering, come at a price of Rs 3.43 lakh and Rs 3.90 lakh respectively.

The new variants will be complete with power steering and an anti-theft system, though this time round the inbuilt music system, power windows and rear windows defogger would be missing.

The ‘S.P.I.C.E.' variants of the Matiz will indeed add more spice to the car market as the power steering model will cost Rs 38,000 less than the Santro's LS Model and Rs 49,000 less than the Zen's VX model, which is without power steering.

SPICE, the acronym for Safety, Power, Innovation, Comfort and Economy, interestingly happens to represent the new positioning for Matiz. The campaign, positioning Matiz as the ‘best value car' will be handled by Enterprise Nexus.

The Daewoo chief reiterated that the new launched were based on market research and on on the rival's decision to cut prices. Earlier, when Daewoo launched three models of the Matiz in response to a market research, Matiz sales had skyrocketed by 50 to 60 per cent. He added that the company is also looking at increasing its presence in metros and is aiming at increasing the market share, this fiscal to 27 per cent from the current 23 per cent.

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