Specialist
Manager at Nissan Motor India Pvt Ltd
Agenda
- Reasons for sluggish sales recovery to pre-pandemic levels
- Near-term sales growth outlook and key leading indicators
- Domestic competitive intensity and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) market positioning
- Sales cycle disruptors – electrification, CNG (compressed natural gas) and alternative fuels
- Feasibility of India as a future global automotive export hub
Questions
1.
Why do you think India’s automotive sales, especially two-wheelers, haven’t bounced back as strongly as expected, given most people in the market believe the pandemic effects have largely worn off there?
2.
How vulnerable do you think the entry-segment buyer for two-wheelers and passenger vehicles is to higher diesel prices and – at least in the near term, potentially longer – rising lending rates? This market is led by the entry-segment buyer. Do you think the TCO [total cost of ownership] for a car is becoming prohibitive for an entry-segment buyer?
3.
On the near-term recovery trajectory and thinking about deeper demand issues and a potential that sales won’t recover vs the chance of being on the cusp of a significant sales boom, is it correct that your stance is more the latter?
4.
Could we see a hiccup in terms of where we are in the inflationary cycle? You discussed affordability and rising income as a driver of sales growth. Do you expect rising prices and price hikes by OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to stifle any near-term sales growth, or even damage it?
5.
What’s your potential growth outlook across two-wheelers and four-wheelers in FY23 over FY22, given the sluggish recovery we’ve been discussing? We’ve also talked about some of the supply constraints and the growth in pre-bookings.
6.
How much sales growth might be more organic from units sold vs the pricing component of the growth, since we are seeing price hikes from OEMs?
7.
How do you think about the nature of the current recovery cycle for passenger vehicles? Do you think it’s cyclical in nature or perhaps more structural and permanent?
8.
What do you think are the key indicators that passenger vehicle recovery is more structural than cyclical or temporary, especially as a sales planner? Are you looking at where the ticket value of a car sale is matching up as a ratio of discretionary incomes and how that ratio is changing?
9.
Have electrification, CNG [compressed natural gas] or alternative fuels vehicles changed the nature of India’s automotive sales cycle?
10.
How should we think about OEMs in the space? We’ve discussed how to think about automotive sales and future trend growth. When we talk about a declining auto sales environment, which OEMs are best-placed to gain share or suffer less than the rest – perhaps starting with passenger vehicles?
11.
We discussed which OEMs are best-positioned in a declining auto sales environment. What about in a growing or significantly growing auto sales environment?
12.
How have your views on the domestic market’s competitive intensity changed, especially for passenger vehicles?
13.
Would you expect non-domestic OEMs operating in India to claim a greater market share vs domestic OEMs that have typically dominated the market?
14.
How might increasing competitive intensity flesh out in terms of actual operating behaviour? Do you expect frequency of product launches across OEMs, increase in marketing spend and so on to have increased competitive intensity?
15.
Why do you think electrification in India hasn’t followed a similar uptake or speed of uptake path to China? There have been a lot of comparisons made between China and India.
16.
Do you have a view on why there are so many operational issues with EVs in India vs China? It seems to have been a gentler introduction in China, whereas in India there seem to be many issues with safety and other operational roll-outs, especially for two-wheeler EVs.
17.
What’s your view on the feasibility of India becoming an export hub for passenger vehicles?
18.
What do you see as the major challenges for OEMs operating out of India in transitioning to global-scale export volumes? Is there a major bottleneck?
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