Volkswagen is a giant german automobile company wich also owns other big brands like Skoda, SEAT, CUPRA, Audi, Lamborghini, Bently, Porsche and Ducati. Volkswagen has always been choice of car enthusiasts in India as their engines churn out best in segment power and driving dynamics of cars offered by the german brand are unmatched in their respective segments. But these fun to drive and peppy cars come at a cost, these cars are over-engineered and very hard to fix. The spare parts of these cars cost around 5 times of a normal Japanese cars and these cars are more prone to breakdowns as engines are not very reliable. Many people in Indian used car market are attracted by low price tags Volkswagen/Skoda cars come with, but the buyers usually end up paying hefty repair bills after purchase of these used german cars as these are more prone to breakdowns and spare parts are really expensive.
Volkswagen 2.0 strategy for India
Volkswagen has made a new strategy for Indian market to address above discussed problems. Volkswagen used following techniques improve their sale numbers in India.
- Increasing localisation to reduce manufacturing costs – By doing this Volkswagen is able to price cars at a very competitive price which was not the case previously. Cars from Volkswagen/Skoda like Virtus, Slavia, Tiguan, Kushaq are priced very close to competitors like Honda city, Verna, Creta and Grand Vitara. By heavy localisation, spare parts of these cars also became releatively cheaper reducing the cost of ownership.
- Making service costs more affordable and offering AMC packages offering several benefits – Volkswagen/Skoda started have become aggressive with service princings and have started offering AMC packs to lower down the cost of ownership of their cars.
- Staying true to their DNA – Volkswagen/Skoda in their 2.0 strategy are still providing good build quality cars with great performance. All of their cars launched under this 2.0 vision have scored 5 start safety ratings in GNCAP crash tests. This USP of build quality and performance is unmatched by any other competitor.
Conclusion – Volkswagen 2.0 strategy for India is working well as Volkswagen has seen a significant growth in the sale numbers. Localisation in production, expansion of product range, focusing on lower cost of ownership has worked wonders for Volkswagen. Let’s see how well Volkswagen will be able to maintain this upward trend in changing Indian automotive scene.