Kia India on Thursday said that it has an aggressive plan next year to better its sales as this year because of the supply chain issues of uplifted models of Seltos and Sonet, the production were limited.

The company is also bringing down its exports to 50 per cent next year, to meet the domestic demand, Tae-Jin Park, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Kia India told businessline on the sidelines of unveiling of new Sonet here. The Seltos maker is also expanding its plant’s capacity by one-lakh, to 4.30 lakh units per year from 3.40 lakh this year, he added.

The company expects to sell 2.55 lakh vehicles this year (calendar) from 2.54 lakh vehicles in 2022 and in exports, around 70,000 units from 80,000 units last year. On exports, he said Kia India exports around 20 per cent of the total production, which will come down to 10 per cent next year to meet the domestic demand.

“We have a very aggressive business plan for the next year because this year, we had a little bit of struggling with our two main models Seltos and Sonet, to balance them out (both refreshed this year). So that had some serious impact on the sales trend...but it is now over and from January onwards, we have both new Seltos and Sonet in the market, that is why we see some aggressive trend,” he said.

New products

From sales point of view, he said the company will also expand its outlets by 100 more over the next one year to more than 529 across the country. “This year we focussed on developing markets in tier-3 and -4 areas, but next year we also looking at possibilities in big cities in tier-1 and -2 because our products have good acceptability in bigger cities,” Park said.

On new product launches next year, apart from refreshed models, he said the company will introduce the new version of its multi-purpose vehicle ‘Carnival’ in a completely knocked-down (CKD) form and the electric SUV ‘EV9’. The company already sells EV6 in its electric vehicle portfolio and aims to target 15-17 per cent market share of the EV market in India by 2030.

Kia India introduced the new Sonet which will come with more than 25 safety features, including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) with 10 autonomous features and 15 Hi-Safety features and over 70 connected car features. Also the company has reintroduced manual transmission across all variants with diesel powertrain.