Italian carmaker Fiat on Wednesday formally made it known that it was ready to kick off retail operations on its own in India. The company had already announced its decision to break off with Tata Motors on the joint marketing arrangement some months ago.

Enrico Atanasio, Director of Fiat Group Automobiles India, said the long-term product strategy was in place to capture a share in “one of the most important automobile markets in the world”. Nagesh Basavanhalli, President & Managing Director, Fiat Chrysler India Operations, added that the current organisational structure provided a “solid platform” for the Indian operations.

Along with group company Chrysler, Fiat will launch nine products as part of its vision to grab a five per cent market share in the coming years. The momentum will begin with the Jeep brand where the Grand Cherokee and Wrangler will debut by the end of this year. Both will be directly imported and mark the first part of the brand-building exercise.

This will be followed by a compact SUV in 2015 and a larger sibling a year later. These will be assembled at the Tata-Fiat facility near Pune. While these products form part of the Chrysler portfolio, the Fiat brand will see refreshes for the Grande Punto and Linea with an all-new SUV adding to the basket.

At an earlier press meet here, Atanasio had said that Fiat and Chrysler represent a “portfolio of technologies” with small cars, large SUVs and pickups to attract the customer. Interestingly, Fiat will also launch its Abarth racing car brand in India.

Will all this help the company this time around? It has had the longest association with the country going back to the 1950s but still has not made much headway when the gates were officially thrown open to multinationals in the 1990s.

The alliance with the Tatas in 2007 promised plenty, but delivered very little on the marketing front. Hence, the decision to go it alone except that Chrysler will be an integral part of Fiat this time around.

‘Thinking pool’ in India

The fact that India is part of Fiat’s overall gameplan for Asia-Pacific (which also includes China, Japan, Australia and South Korea) reflects a dramatic change in mindset since the time decisions emanated from Turin.

Atanasio had earlier told Business Line that the R&D centre in Chennai was the biggest in Asia-Pacific which clearly showed where India stood in the Fiat map as the “biggest thinking pool”. Engineers here work on Fiat projects in the Americas, Europe, West Asia and Africa.

>murali.gopalan@thehindu.co.in

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