Fiat India Automobiles Ltd on Friday launched two variants of its flagship Linea sedan and said it has engaged consulting firm Accenture Plc to help improve sales and enhance visibility.
The Indian joint venture of Tata Motors Ltd and Italy’s Fiat SpA has seen sedan sales decline by 7.99% to 11,863 cars in the six months ended September, according to industry lobby group Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. September sales dropped 35.72% to 1,650 units.
“We thought a common dealership for two very different brands is going to be easy, but the experience told us it’s not as easy as we thought,” Rajeev Kapoor, president and chief executive at Fiat India, said on Friday.
Since the Tata and Fiat brands are positioned very differently, “the dealers were living double lives”, he said.
Fiat sells the Grande Punto, Linea and Stile models in India. With the entry of new models, such as Volkswagen AG’s Polo and Vento, and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd’s Micra, among others, it has been facing rising competition.
Accenture has been studying Fiat India’s weaknesses in product, price, positioning and distribution for almost a month now, Kapoor said.
Tata Motors has been helping Fiat strengthen the dealer network. Fiat India has expanded the number of Tata-Fiat dealerships to 175, making it the largest after Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Hyundai Motor India Ltd and Tata Motors.
Kapoor said the new T-Jet premium variants of Linea will help his company reach the premium sedans segment, which sells about 10,000 cars a month, led by Honda Siel Cars India Ltd’s City model.
The variants are priced at Rs.8.84 lakh onwards (ex-showroom, Mumbai). To begin with, they will be sold in Mumbai, Pune and the Delhi-National Capital Region, which accounts for at least half of the sales for such models, Kapoor said.
Puneet Gupta, an analyst at forecasting firm CSM Worldwide, said while Fiat has good models, it hasn’t been able to address fears about after-sales service and resale.
“They shall be able to turn the tables if they come out with schemes that warrant a good return when people are trading their old Fiat cars with new ones,” said Gupta.
In August, Carl-Peter Forster, group chief executive and managing director, Tata Motors, said the company is not satisfied with the Tata-Fiat joint venture in terms of volumes and was looking at ways to sell more Fiat cars.
In the quarter ended June, the three-year-old joint venture made a cash profit of Rs.22 crore against a loss of Rs.166 crore a year earlier.