We will be focusing more on premium segment, says Honda Cars

Country's fourth largest car maker Honda India last week launched the new Honda City, a model which has been its mainstay since the time it was launched in the late 1990s. The company's sales have been on decline since the past few quarters. Yoichiro Ueno, president and CEO, Honda Cars India talks to Shahkar Abidi about falling sales, the new marketing and branding strategies to regain the lost ground, among other things.

The demand for Maruti Ciaz is getting better than Honda City's. How do you plan to arrest City's slide?

It depends upon how you look at it. Our competitor is definitely around double our size when it comes to diesel version. But then, when it comes to petrol version, we are much more than double their size in numbers. The reason for it is that Maruti Ciaz has benefited from the incentives accruing out of lesser excise, FAME (faster adoption and manufacturing of (hybrid &) electric vehicles in India) benefit and VAT (in Delhi) as a result of which they are playing the price game. On the other hand, we decided to shift gears to focus more on petrol than diesel in the changed regulatory environment.

Your strategy to enter compact car segment with Brio, Jazz and Amaze has so far not gone down well.

The entry-level segment has not done well for us. Honda as a brand is known for its premium cars. So, moving forward, we will be focusing more on the premium segment which is where our strength lies and we don't want to dilute our brand. For example, we had expected an order of around 1000-1,500 units for new Honda City, but now, the order stands at more than 5,500 and still, counting (till Friday). As part of our new strategy, we will be launching a new car in coming month.

Mobilio's sales failed to pick up. What are you doing about it? Any plans to phase it out?

Mobilio's sales were not as what we had expected, but we have no plans to shut down its production at present. We are at trying to push it to long-range fleet operators. Some other car models like Amaze are also being pushed through aggregators as we also know that shared mobility is the future and we as a company would like to be part of this revolution.

What's the latest plan from the company?

At present, we are in the process of 380 acre land acquisition near Vithalpur, which is around 80 kilometre from Ahmedabad in Gujarat. We have invested in the project considering the long-term prospect of the growth in India, which is among the fastest-growing auto markets in the world. The per capita income of India is expected to rise to over $4,000, which will bring more number of people into a category where they can purchase cars. We would like to be there when that happens.