Becoming A People's Car, Again

German automaker Volkswagen has revamped its india strategy to gain a bigger share of the country’s booming auto market

- Manu Balachandran

Gurpratap Boparai certainly knows the importance of planning well. He often spends a few weeks every year riding across India on his Triumph Thruston R and in the last few weeks of December, the managing director of Skoda Auto Volkswagen India (SAVI) rode from Mumbai to Wayanad in Kerala, a distance of more than 2,000 km over 10 days. Certainly, that could not have been done without a detailed plan in hand.

It is perhaps this attention to detail the engineer-turned-business executive is banking on to resurrect the fortunes of the world’s largest carmaker, the Volkswagen Group, in India. A veteran of the Tata Group, Boparai, 50, is known for the phenomenal success of SUV maker Jeep, when as the head of FCA India Automobiles (Fiat) he played a crucial role in bettering localisation levels and ensuring seamless production of the Compass model. At SAVI, Boparai has several challenges in the year ahead.

The Volkswagen Group—makers of Skoda, Volkswagen, Audi, Lamborghini, and Porsche—has struggled in India, particularly against Korean and Indian carmakers, in gaining a sizeable presence for more than a decade. Having begun operations in 2001 through its subsidiary Skoda Auto India, the Wolfsburg-headquartered company is yet to replicate its global success in India, the world’s fifth-largest automobile market. In 2018, the Volkswagen Group sold nearly 11 million vehicles globally; in India it didn’t even cross 100,000. With a combined market share of 2 percent, Volkswagen’s fortunes are in stark contrast to Hyundai Motors, which began operations in India four years before Skoda’s entry and has emerged as the country’s second-largest carmaker, cornering a little over 18 percent of the market.