A bullish Skoda expects new Kodiaq to drive sales up 25%

Amidst the deepening gloom in the domestic auto industry, Czech carmaker Skoda Auto on Monday launched a facelift of its premium SUV Kodiaq with a diesel engine option and sounded bullish about its growth plans. The company has no plans to "slow down" its investment in the country neither in the short term nor in the long term, director for sales, service & marketing Zac Hollis said.

The new launch labelled Kodiaq Scout is priced at Rs 33.99 lakh rpt Rs 33.99 lakh and comes almost two years after the Central European car major rolled out its maiden SUV the Kodiaq here. The new model is equipped with nine airbags. "The Kodiaq Scout is an integral part of our SUV campaign in this market. While retaining its strong family characteristics, we hope the Scout will continue to drive our success here," Hollis said, adding it has already sold 4,000 Kodiaqs since the launch in 2017 and the new rollout is expected to push its sales up by 25 percent.

Last July, the Volkswagen Group company had announced Rs 8,000 crore investment in the country as part of its "India 2.0" project to be led by Skoda to strengthen its presence. The group had also set a target of capturing 5 percent of the car market by 2025, up from around 2 percent currently.

"Year 2018 was significant for us as we sold 1 million cars for five consecutive years globally. In future, we intend to make India a significant part of our global growth strategy. With the India 2.0 project, we will not slow down our investment neither in short term nor in the long-term," said Hollis. Discounting the deepening crisis in the domestic auto market, he said, "we are certainly optimistic about future" and that they will go ahead with the stated plan of launching at least five new model before the end of 2020.

Skoda India is also looking at more than tripling the number of dealers to around 200 from 64 now as it seeks to penetrate the small towns, he said. Last week, the company had announced investment of over Rs 120 crore in rebranding its sales and service network.

"We plan to triple the number of touch points to around 200 from 64 at present in the next five years. We are making our existing network more robust and visible by adding more touch-points. With the current model range, we don't have a good business case to venture into those small cities. But as we expand under India 2.0 project, we will have a business case to expand into smaller cities with small showrooms and stores for sales, service and spares," he added. Under this project, Skoda will launch two new cars in 2021--a mid-sized SUV and a notback sedan--which will be 95 percent localised, he said adding it will also launch more products from the same India-specific MQB platform..