Though a globally established brand, Nissan is considered quite weak in Nepal. Hence, the company has recently appointed a new authorised distributor for Nepal to compete better in the market.
In this context, Onlinekhabar’s Rabindra Ghimire talked to Sandeep Sarda, Managing Director of Pioneer Moto Corp, Nissan’s new authorised distributor for Nepal.
Nissan was present in the Nepali market for more than 20 years. What difference will you make as the new distributor?
In terms of marketing, Nissan is the most aggressive auto company in the world. It sold most number of cars in the first six months of 2017 in the global market. We are trying to replicate the same model in Nepal.
You can see the difference in price of our vehicles in Nepal after we took the distributorship. We will also reduce the price of spare parts. We will not restrict ourselves to a small-volume business. We will become quite aggressive in promoting the sales.
You could complain that the distributor could not provide good after-sales service yesterday; the costs of ownership and parts were high; the marketing was weak. Now, we will address all those issues. It means the Nissan does not stick to its old position. We are here to create a difference.
But, how do you compete with other global companies which already have a strong presence in Nepali?
We will be aggressive in all aspects and sectors. We will provide services related to parts in such a way that the customers find it easy and cost-efficient to use our products. Likewise, we will make Nissan vehicles more accessible as our marketing will reach more places and people.
We will establish dealers in more than 12 places within next three to four months. Then, customers can feel a higher level of service from us.
Why did you take the responsibility to distribute Nissan in Nepal?
Nepali customers already know what Nissan is and why it is different from other cars. But, in the past, there were problems with the services of the distributor. If we can address those issues, the brand will do a good business in Nepal. We are here just to exploit that potential.
Customers just need to have appropriate cost of ownership, good pricing, visibility and quality services. We will provide them.
Nissan targets to position itself as one of the top five auto brands in the Nepali market within one year. Then, in next three years, we will become one of the top two brands.
Our branding already has a weight to meet these targets and it all depends on our marketing. Therefore, we will bring new small and medium SUVs from India and other premium vehicles from Japan and Thailand.
We will also introduce some Nepal-centric models. Nissan already has around 50 models and we will choose around 10 which will best suit Nepali roads. We will also consider needs of our customers while preparing our strategy.
Does that mean that Nissan focuses both ‘class’ and ‘mass’ consumers?
Yes. We have different segments for different classes of customers. Our target includes everyone. We will import cars of B and C segments, small cars, hatchbacks, sedans, small and medium SUVs from India; but we will import premium vehicles from Japan and Thailand.
Can you please share with us what groundwork you are doing to provide the services as you have claimed?
In the first phase, we will establish 14 service stations. We are upgrading our service station in Kathmandu. We will make our parts available easily at a fair price. We are ready to give up our profits to expand the market. You can see the cheapest Nissan vehicle is available for just Rs 2.4 million. People have not believed it yet; but we want them to believe that Nissan is accessible to them. We are confident that we will achieve what we want.
