• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• BL Club
• Smartbuy

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

The eco-friendly Reva electric cars (file photo).

K. Giriprakash

Bangalore, Nov. 12 The slowdown in the auto sector as well as the uniqueness of the product itself has prompted India’s first electric car maker, Reva, to scout for non-traditional routes such as electronic goods’ retail chains to sell its cars.

The electric car maker is also witnessing some benefit from higher petrol prices as its car sales have increased to 300 cars till October compared with about 160 cars it sold the whole of last fiscal. It expects to end the year with sales of about 750 cars.

Turning the concept of selling cars at exclusive showrooms on its head, Reva believes that as both the electronic products and the electric cars work on ‘plug & play’ model, it would be easier to sell their cars from these stores.

Reva is also in talks with a few auto finance companies to work out a scheme which allows customers to drive off the Reva with as less as Rs 1 lakh for a car whose ‘on-road’ price is between Rs 3.5 lakh and Rs 4.4 lakh. The rest will be financed through loans with far less interest rates.

Reva is also simultaneously working on newer models which will have lighter batteries and can carry more passengers to longer distances. At present, the weight of a battery in a 750 kg Reva car is about 250 kg. “We are working on models which will be different from the current models and they are on an advanced stage of development,” Reva President for Sales & Marketing, Mr R. Chandramouli, told Business Line. Reva expects to launch a new model every year till 2011-12.

Mr Chandramouli, who earlier worked with TVS Motor for over two decades, said the traditional route of selling cars through exclusive showrooms does not always work for a car like Reva. “The issue which keeps coming up is how do I feed my distribution channels if the sales are down,” he said. If the sales are down, the inventory levels are also high and hence alliances with channels such as electronic retail chains can reduce total cost.

Mr Chandramouli ruled out any move to compete with the Nano small car as both the cars catered to two different segments.

“Nano is more of a mass market car but our customers are different,” he said. Reva does not plan to hawk its cars to every customer. In a survey carried out among car buyers in 2007, it found out that 38 per cent of the customers bought an additional car and 50 per cent of its own customers are women. “We are trying to tap these type of buyers to increase our sales,” Mr Chandramouli said.

More Stories on : Outlook | Strategy | Cars

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line