Kia Motors has earned a global reputation as an SUV maker over the years and is amongst the top ten car makers globally. Also, a sister company of the Hyundai, Kia is said to be pondering over entering the Indian car market. The announcement regarding Kia’s India campaign is expected to arrive by March 2017.
Kia Motors is the 9th largest car maker in the world selling over 30 lakh cars and has 14 manufacturing plants across the world. Expectedly, its next step would be to expand its global footprint and venture into the growing Indian car market, the fifth largest automobile market in the world. It is learnt that the Korean car maker is already in the process of evaluation of their entry into the Indian market. Kia Motors is mulling setting up their plant number 15 in India which would ideally be an export hub like Hyundai.
Kia Motors is the sister concern of the second largest car manufacturer in India – Hyundai. Han-Woo Park, CEO Kia Motors has had experience of the Indian car market when he served as the top gun for Hyundai India. Park had been instrumental in building the core Hyundai team in India that went on to surpass Tata, Mahindra and Honda to challenge the Maruti Suzuki, the market leader in the country.
Hyundai’s perception in India is still of an easy-on-budget brand and hence Kia would naturally will have to take the premium position to create an identity for itself. Hyundai’s learnings in India over the years would certainly help the Kia strategy. Also, Hyundai-Kia will have to take into consideration the Renault-Nissan-Datsun and Skoda-Volkswagen cases in India where the multi-pronged approach has not really worked in wooing the Indian customer. On the other hand, the global SUV image of Kia might come handy for the Korean car maker with the future of the automobile market looking to go the SUV way.
