Thursday, January 10, 2013

But leadership in the passenger car segment

hyundai did humble the market leader in 1998. but leadership in the passenger car segment is still a far cry for this korean giant

Today the Korean giant also stands tall as the second largest car manufacturer in the country and the largest exporter of passenger cars; which means it has also leveraged India’s potential as a car exporting hub to the maximum. Products like Accent and Santro Xing have been quite successful. As H. S. Lheem, CEO & MD, Hyundai India avers, “When we entered India we never realised that the Indian consumer is very focussed on the family.” Models like Santro Xing and Accent clearly signify that the company learnt its lessons fast.

Even when the Indian auto industry saw a steep fall in the demand of cars in the last year, the company managed to report a 22.5% increase in the domestic sales. Moreover, Hyundai, which has made India an export hub for its small cars, nearly doubled the number of cars it shipped to Europe to almost a quarter of a million units. As per the company filings, sales revenue was up by 82.9% to 3,898 billion Korean won (Rs.155 billion). But Hyundai Motor Co.’s Indian subsidiary suffered its first ever annual loss in the year ending December (credited to currency fluctuations). The company lost a mind boggling Rs.56 billion in India in the last calendar year.

And it is not that the company was saved from knockout punches in the market. Getz became an eyesore, wherein, Hyundai could not take the lead in the premium small car segment despite being the pioneer (once Swift came in, the Getz was pushed behind). The Sonata, similarly, was a major failure in the market. The same was the case with the Elantra model, which shows that Hyundai’s experience with the high margin luxury segments has not been too exciting. Moreover, like the other players, it was late to understand the potential of diesel passenger cars, an area where Tata’s vision was proved to be very right; which gave the Indica a huge boost.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,