Fiat gets its India house in order, ready for takeoff

From Nagesh Basavanhalli’s point of view, it made little sense to put the cart before the horse.

The President & Managing Director of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles India was categorical that a strong foundation had to be in place first before getting into the product launch phase. Since the time the Italian automaker decided to go on its own in marketing sans ally, Tata Motors, there has been a lot of work happening over the last year.

“We needed to fix the back-end and now have 116 dealerships across the country. We will continue our strategic expansion which will take us closer to our customers. The challenge is to take lessons from the past and constantly improve on them,” Basavanhalli told Business Line .

Building an exclusive network is a key part of Fiat’s three-pillar strategy for India, with the other two being new products and brand-building. Top-class service standards will be integral to this business model, where the company has pulled out all the stops on training personnel and creating infrastructure.

“One of the concerns in the past was availability of spare parts. We have told our dealers that frequently used spares should be stocked at any point in time,” Basavanhalli says. Even if the dealer does not have a particular part, the Chakan warehouse near Pune, which is Fiat’s largest facility in the Asia-Pacific, will help out.

Likewise, parts affordability is an area the Indian arm has worked on relentlessly. “People think it is a European brand and, therefore, expensive. We have been monitoring prices of our spares in the last 18 months, including those which are commonly used. The results show we are on the right track,” a confident Basavanhalli says. Finally, the key is to ensure low cost of ownership and keep the customer content.

As part of the service mantra, Fiat Amico will involve service representatives reaching out to the customer soon after he/she buys a car. They double up as relationship managers who are constantly around to help out.

The efforts are paying off with data indicating that customer complaints have been coming down over the last year. “The trend in service, customer relations and dealership access has improved, which means the infrastructure is in place for product expansion,” Basavanhalli says.

The following week will see the launch of the new Punto, while the Avventura crossover will be out during the next two months followed by the Abarth 500 around the November festive season.

Basavanhalli is encouraged by the positive feedback he has been getting from potential buyers during his travels across the country.

“In Kanpur, people asked me about Avventura which they heard about last at the Expo. Rome was not built in a day and we know that we have to earn customers’ trust and claw our way back. We will have 12 products by 2018 and are putting it all together,” he says.

Basavanhalli believes the Punto and Avventura are particularly significant as they were designed with the Indian buyer in mind. The Punto is a top-selling model globally, but the hatchback has been tweaked for India keeping in mind conditions here. “How do you take a beautiful car to the next level? By listening to the young Indian and finding out what he/she wants,” the Fiat chief says.

The third critical pillar is brand building which is ironical for a company which has had the longest association with India. Yet, it just has not managed to get its act together since the time it set up manufacturing operations two decades ago.

“There have been valuable lessons learnt and we see that India is changing, while Fiat has also evolved with the merger of Chrysler. We are the seventh largest automaker globally and it is important to communicate a Fiat which is all about technology, passion and styling,” Basavanhalli says.

The ‘Hello Life’ television campaign showed the new face of Fiat, which is about delivering the emotional needs to buyers. It is intended to be the brand anthem that will resonate with the new products scheduled for launch. “We are going to begin talking about life, which goes beyond transportation needs. We are trying to use our brand to reach out to more customers,” Basavanhalli says.

The following year will see the launch of the Jeep brand where the customer will get a different experience at dealerships. The two brands (Fiat and Chrysler) will be distinct and, most likely, in exclusive showrooms. The Jeep customer, for instance, will pay “premium SUV money” keeping in line with the brand.

Basavanhalli is equally pleased with the Chrysler Technical Centre in Chennai where part of his mandate is to integrate (Fiat and Chrysler) operations in India. There is now a Pune Technical Centre too with nearly 1,200 engineers working across the two facilities. These people do not just focus on global programmes but India-specific products also.

“The idea is to ensure that competencies derived from global projects are put to good use for the Indian market by Indians who understand the market,” Basavanhalli says. The second homecoming for Fiat has kicked off in right earnest.

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