Audi looks at double-digit growth in India

Rahil Ansari, who took charge as head of Audi India last year at 38, is among the youngest brand directors of the German carmaker and is also the first Indian-origin head of Audi in India. After having spent 13 years with Audi globally, Ansari has been tasked by the group management to take the company back to number one position in the Indian luxury segment market. In an interview with Shahkar Abidi, on the sidelines of the launch of second-generation Audi Q5, Ansari spoke about the opportunities and challenges facing the company, the impact of goods and services tax, future launches and his plans to regain the market share.

How do you look back at the year 2017, considering all the challenges and hiccups it brought in for the automakers?

I think we are overall happy with the way we have closed the year. There was a 2% growth as we sold 7,876 units during the year, which eventually means it was a good year for us, despite the GST and cess increase. There were many challenges and things were not easy.

After the cess hike, almost all the luxury car manufacturers had said that they will reconsider the investment in India. What is your position now?

But I have also said that we would need to look at the overall impact of the decision. In spite of all the challenges and changes that have taken place in the country last year, we have managed to grow in India. The result has been great for us. Also, it is premature to comment (on it) as we are still evaluating and we need to see how the market reacts in 2018. For example, we have expectations from the Union Budget. We are looking forward to luxury cars becoming more accessible to a large number of people in this vast country. It would be our request to the government to consider and reevaluate this in order to create the right environment for growth. Coming back to your question, I can say that India is a very important market for growth, though the sales numbers at present may be very small. The market will resume to grow dramatically. I think we should be growing in double-digits.

What numbers would you give when talking about double-digit growth?

By double-digit growth I mean the industry can grow between 10 and 20%, depending upon how the economy and demand plays up. But it depends and may change. For example, if there is any change during Budget, things could go differently.

How important is Q5 from the context of increasing the market share in India?

The year 2018 will be the year of progression for us as we will see many launches. The launch of Audi Q5 is an example of this. The first Audi Q5 was for many years the world’s best-selling model in its class and with the new Q5 we are setting the bar a notch higher. Hence, it is very important from our business strategy point of view.

What is the company doing to regain its leadership?

It is always easy or comparatively easy to buy market share. That is not important to us. What is important to us is to have sustainable profit, and for that, we need to do out homework well. If our partners are profitable, then they will invest further into the business. I am not looking at year 2018, 2019 or 2020 (for becoming number 1), but to do our homework well in order to achieve our long-terms goals.

What is happening to your electric vehicle (EV) introduction in India? How soon will we be able to see it?

The government wants to have 100% vehicles to be EVs by 2030. We will be bringing three EVs globally by the year 2020 including India if the infrastructure is ready. So we are going full-throttle in terms of preparation for the EVs. Globally by 2025, Audi is looking to have 30% of its sales to come from electric vehicles. It plans to introduce one EV model each year starting 2020.

The correspondent was invited by Audi for Q5 launch in Delhi