Khattar’s Carnation lines up 100 stores in 4 years

In a country where 80% of the passenger car market rests with the top three manufacturers and a majority of vehicle servicing and used-vehicle business is done in the unorganised sector, this could be a welcome change.

Jagdish Khattar, the man who steered Maruti Suzuki for close to 14 years, on Wednesday announced the launch of perhaps India’s first multi brand sales and service network for all kinds of vehicles.

To begin with, Khattar has ventured into car servicing, repairs and accessories, offering all these services across multiple brands at the same location. “Our Auto Solution Hubs would provide everything a car owner would need to maximise his car ownership experience under one roof,” he said.

Carnation Auto has been set up with an investment of Rs 108 crore from PE investors PremjiInvest and IFCI Ventures and the Auto Solution Hubs are already operational across Amritsar, Chennai, Noida (2), Mumbai (3), Hyderabad and Kochi.

It plans an investment of Rs 1,000 crore for rolling out 100 such stores over the next four years. Multi brand sales and service outlets are common abroad and help both the manufacturers and customers, says Khattar.

“We have seen cases of dealers of large car brands giving up dealerships over the last several months because they have turned unviable. Then, brands which do not sell huge numbers need a pan-India presence but do not have the capacity to bring in large investments required to set up such a network. In both cases, a multi-brand network would be the solution”.

Over the next few months, Khattar will begin retailing used cars at his outlets; a pilot project has already begun in Mumbai. He is also toying with the idea of introducing spare parts under Carnation’s own brand. It is eyeing revenues of Rs 75 crore this fiscal and breakeven in the next.