[TrackDay]

Aiming for such numbers is a good strategy. But it is very important to have the network and capacity to cater to the after sales and service of such a huge number of cars sold.

Also is Skoda introducing new models this year ? Recall that there was some discussion about a premium sedan. Also what about the Fabia hatch ? An enriched lineup can bring in the numbers provided they meet the expectation of the targeted audience.

[Altocumulus]

Being borderline biased, 2 times Skoda owner and an evangelist of the brand, I too think this is a bit too optimistic but you never know.
When Creta was launced it was priced way higher than the competition and still people lapped it up.
Also keeping the cars aside, the recent sales and showroom experience of Skoda is top notch. Very premium and plush showrooms and add to that the behaviour of sales personnels are fantastic. Even when I cancelled the booking. Huge difference with that of Hyundai and Kia. I was irritated and disgusted with the latter two especially of their snobbish behaviour. If Skoda can ensure footfall into their showrooms, a lot of people will just go ahead with Skoda just for being treated well. Add to that, a lot of positive reviews about the service experience nowadays instead of horror ones. They might just pull it off.

[Suchu90]

IMHO skoda has set it's target a little too high. With rising fuel costs and having only petrol engines on offer, it is going to be a big task to get the cars rolling off the showrooms. They might sell around 3-4k/month(Kushaq) in the initial few months but once the euphoria dies I don't see why/how they can manage to sell more than 2k. There was a growing interest in petrol cars since last few years and more so after the BS6 norms were announced but now with soaring petrol costs I feel that sentiment is slowly dying and people are now looking at the used car market for diesel cars or they just prefer getting the diesel offerings from the korean twins and tata. These are hard times for any manufacturer and more so for the european brands. EVs might gain traction sooner than we might have actually assumed, Skoda missed a good opportunity in introducing mild hybrid or something similar, especially considering they have no diesel engines to offer!
Anyways I honestly want brands like Ford, Skoda, VW, Renault, Nissan to do well in india and not give up just yet.

[mnram]

The pricing of their current portfolio is a bit off target and the lack of certain basic features can be worrisome for the numbers they are targeting. But with the upcoming launches, they might be able to achieve the numbers narrowly by spreading the numbers over the wider range.
I really hope that they achieve their targetted numbers so that they can build up a strong base in India. I don't want the Indian roads to be fully inundated with Maruti's, and the Koreans. I really wish the success for other brands like Ford, VW, Renault, Citroen, and Nissan.

[livelyyoungman]

60K in 2022. A tall and stiff target. For them to achieve that the After Sale Service should drastically improve. When I got my Octavia, the sales guy mentioned that the ORVM costing has come down by 50%. I was surprised and asked him the prior and after costing. He was candid enough to say it reduced from 25K to 13K. Good move, but still a costly affair if you want to own a Skoda. Unless and Until price to quality becomes a VFM for Indians 60K sales will be only in their dreams.

[itwasntme]

In BLR at least, Skoda (& their dealer principals, TAFE & PPS) have made substantial investments in infrastructure in all 3 verticals, namely Sales, Service & certified cars.

I wish them all the best. This is an excellent chance to bury the ghosts and start afresh with the brand new Kushaq & Slavia, 2021 Octavia & 2022 vRS, facelifted 2021 Kodiaq and the 2023 Superb.

Simplistically speaking, the only fly in the ointment is the deliberate strategy of not bringing in any PHEVs OR laying out a roadmap for EVs. THAT can bite them 5 years from now.

[Stribog]

What many automakers seem to get wrong but Kia and SAIC UK got right is that the Indian market is NOT cost conscious but value conscious. It is what I would call the "corriander paradox" where the free Rs 5 worth coriander (After buying Rs 1,000 worth of veggies) determines if a veggie shop does well or no and eventually every such shop caves in and offers this, here the quality of the produce is important, the pricing is important but also equally important is the "what is the value add here".

Rather than call the Kushaq overpriced, I would fault its value : cost mix. The Kushaq could be priced even Rs 1-2L higher and still do great numbers but it needs to bring in more value - maybe size, maybe what the forum mostly refers to in a derisive manner, "the bells and whistles, Diwali lights etc etc.

We can sit here and argue till the cows come home on how the Kushaq is dynamically superior (which if it is, it might be marginally so) to the Korean siblings or MG but to 95% of the customers who are in the market for a 16-25l csuv, they want to know what is it hat Kushaq does the others dont.

Is it larger? No

Is it a hugely inspirational brand like the big 3 Germans? No

Does it at least offer a diesel? No

Phir VFM kidhar hai? Let me hop over to the nearest Korean showroom or MG or Tata (for the Harrier)

Don't just take my word for it, just consider how TaMo changed its fortunes around entirely! It produces cars that are a segment bigger (Harrier) and loaded to the gills with all the bells and whistles - where even TaMo fails to do so, the numbers reflect it.

The Harrier pre bells and whistles stage (BS4) on launch month sold 2,500 units approx, then dropped like a rock hitting sub 1,000 units in July, Aug and Sept before stabilising around 1,200.

And this was in a pre covid economy.

Then Tata goes back to the drawing board, throw in a higher powered engine (big vfm point), pano sunroof and other bells and whistles and Apr 2021, just the Harrier was at 1,700 units, in May the Harrier and Safari combine was pushing 3,000 units comfortably. Starting the BS6 launch just the Harrier has been consistently climbing the sales charts, breached the 2,000 mark in Sept 20 and stayed there till Mar when it dropped because the Safari picked up some of its volumes but combined they are now consistently breaching the 3k Mark.

The MG is a runaway success story and I don't even need to mention it, here is a +20l avg sticker price car consistently selling 4,000+ units.

So it is NOT money that is a challenge, but the value or perceived value that a product adds.

VAG and enthusiasts in our forum might argue passionately about how these are an enthusiasts car or whatever till the crows come home to roost but it won't sell period!

If Skoda are serious about gaining volumes in this market, then they would have to launch a Skoda Kushaq 2.0 (like TaMo and Harrier 2.0). Add in all the missing features, hold the price steady AND then the numbers will start flowing. If their economies of scale won't permit it, then am afraid the market will cause this also to be a failure.

Btw apply the TaMo Harrier story to any car and you can determine why it failed or suceeded.

Take the Magnite, the Nissan / Datsun brand was an absolute pariah right? Yet Nissan did its homework, launched the brilliant Magnite, priced it at the perfect sweet spot, gave it a competent engine, LOADED it with all the bells and whistles and the kitchen sink and are now laughing all the way to the bank. I have colleagues (3) who picked up a Magnite who 6 months ago would have not even heard of or touched a Nissan with a 1000 feet long barge pole. And no, 99% of the average layperson car market don't spend time on autoforums like we do, so the horror ASS stories don't really matter - don't believe me, ask Nissan and how its Magnite has become a runaway success. ASS and network size is really not a factor as long as there is a showroom and service centre within easy (say 10-15 kms) reach. Heck MG had ONE showroom in Chennai till recently and sold its Hector in decent enough volumes.

The Kicks was a "superior dynamic platform" compared to the likes of the Creta but it never sold...why? The Corriander Paradox!

As a person who passionately wants the larger Indian auto market to move on from Maruti and Hyundai (only when they drop their market share to sub 30-40% combined will I believe the market evolve faster and more dynamically), I was sincerely hoping that Skoda would pull a Harrier 2.0 or Magnite out of their hat but in my limited opinion they severely dropped the ball.

My prediction is that on launch month + 2 it might hit 2,000-2,500 units and then plummet to around the 1,000 mark and stay there.

[sramanat]

Going by May sales figures of Creta at 7K+, Seltos at 4K+. Assuming half of these are the petrol variants, a realistic number for Kushaq could be under 2K. And if the market is depressed due to COVID, one can expect a 30% increase in sales once the situation eases - say around Jan 2022 Kushaq could sell just under 3K. That would bring annual sales to about 30K over the year. Assuming a 1K sales for Rapid and another 500 for the pricier sedans, they can sell another 15-20K (highly optimistic given Rapid's EOL and sedans as a market contracting).. Hard to see how they can make up for the remaining 15K. They need one or both of the below -

1. launch a hatch - Put the 1L in a Fabia type car
2. launch a sub-4m SUV - may be a cheaper, descoped Kushaq could play here, but unlikely.

All this is based on assumption that the current depression is due to COVID and the market will bounce back. If this leads to an actual recession/depression, all bets are off.

[prajwalmr62]

And I'm going to earn a million dollars!

But due to unforeseen circumstances like Covid-19, and my employer's inability to pay me this much for the work I do, I could not hit this mark. (/s)

Can't wait to see whom Škoda will blame for not reaching their goals. 30k seems reasonable if Kushaq sales pick up. But 60k? it means 5000 cars per month for complete 2022.

Assuming they get to have around 200 dealerships, that's 25 cars per month per dealer.

[anjan_c2007]

60,000 is a dream figure emerging from its boardroom for the German car maker, going by its 20 year track record in our country.

The customers play a pivotal role. Next come the dealers. If the customers are unhappy with the dealers' services and also the unreasonably high prices of spares, Skoda needs to reboot. They launched the Kushaq with an almost 90% localised content and whether this translates to reasonably pricing the spares is a question that can get its answers over a period of time. With the Kushaq pricing and goodies on offer, they have committed some gaffes. We are discussing it in a separate thread. Hope Skoda takes corrective steps to rectify the 'not so good things' that come as baggage with the Kushaq.

They need to do a TaMo like cleansing act to gain market traction.

[headbanger]

Skoda has to make a choice which numbers do they want to go with-5k dispatches per month vis a vis profitability or may be both?

Purely from a market segment perspective, Maruti is the king of 0—12L plate. Hyundai tried to challenge them but they were mature and savvy to understand that beating Maruti on its own turf ain't easy. What Hyundai did was to make 13-20L range it's bastion similar to what Maruti did in lower range.

So what does this leave Skoda with? Skoda or any other manufacturer can't sell 5k in above 20L market every month. So Skoda needs at least a couple of models which can bring the numbers. For these models to fight and succeed in the Hyundai bastion, Skoda will need to either compromise on profits OR lower the quality. Both choices are difficult. The fall of Honda is a case study where strategy failure of lowering the quality was the culprit.

What Skoda has shown with Kushaq is that they will not let go of profits and murmurs of Skoda indianising the car have just started. The other problem is that if Skoda ends up giving discounts on new products like Kushaq, the message that goes out to the market is not encouraging either. Once a brand starts discounting in our part of world, we consider it as our birth right.

Last but not the least, Skoda cannot just rely on the discerning buyers or evangelists alone for consistent numbers. They can only help you so far. The fact that the market perception about maintaining Skoda is not healthy either also creates a barrier for potential customer.

All of the above points mean that Skoda is fighting a multifactorial game here. And Skoda wants to capture 5% without hurting profits.

Answers aren't easy but my suggestion to Skoda is to do what it did with Rapid. Allow a lower entry barrier for the customer to come to a Skoda showroom and experience their offerings. If I end up buying Rapid today, it will be at least in Ambition trim but I entered Skoda showroom due to rider plus edition. If a customer walks after test driving their offerings, let be it. You need to have footfall first before converting it to a potential sale.

The other point is to be extremely competent about their after sales. Word of mouth is the social currency.

Good luck Skoda. For all the problems that Skoda may have, there is at least one thing going for them - there is a strong emotional connect that customers have with their Skoda cars. Just a glimpse on the Kushaq thread and without going in the right or wrong conundrum, Skoda manages to evoke emotions in the customers very unlike any other brand in its segment.

[Nilesh5417]

Is Zac Hollis referring to combined sales of Skoda+VAG? Given that VAG and Skoda are one and same in India, isn't Zac responsible for both brands?

[volkman10]

Originally Posted by Nilesh5417

-- isn't Zac responsible for both brands?

No, he is not

[Nilesh5417]

Originally Posted by volkman10

No, he is not

Attachment 2174125

Thanks - that clears it up.

[07CR]

Let me see.
800 units for all 20 + lakh cars.
800-1000 units of Kushaq
1000 units for Slavia.

At max they could manage about 30-33K numbers. If Kushaq (and some extent Octavia)pricing was right, they could have achieved the 60K. Now it looks impossible.