If Janis Joplin crooned “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”, car dealers across the country are singing a slightly different song. Santa’s homecom-ing in 2016 is not cheering up the Indian consumer who would have otherwise zoomed into 2017 in a

brand new automobile. December, traditionally a month of huge discounts and offers by OEMs and dealers, has failed to entice cash crunched customers, one month after demonetisation.

“Car buying can wait — that is the overwhelming sentiment…consumers are taking care of their essen-tials first,” says Sanjay Thakkar, automobile dealer for internationally acclaimed brands including Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Ashok Leyland. Business is down 40%, he notes.

The decision to demonetise and get ̀ 500 and ̀ 1000 notes out of circulation has kept consumers off auto show-rooms. Industry body Society of Indian Automobile

Manufacturers (SIAM) has re-ported that sales across categories dipped over 5%. Passenger vehicles grew a mere 1.82% while commer-cial vehicles, three-wheelers and two-wheelers segments were most-hit, declining 11.6% and 25.9%, re-spectively.

Discounts and schemes offering 100% financing on vehicle pur-chases too haven’t helped. “This is a double whammy for us. We are sit-ting on huge stocks and despite au-

tomakers announcing interesting schemes in December to clear inventories, footfalls are near zero,” notes a Ford and Mahindra dealer whose business is down 50%.

Consumers are holding on to their cash and even if one is clean, one doesn’t want to invite IT queries for a car…so, car buying is put on the backburner, he sighs.

With the consumer in a state of shock, the usual December fervour is missing. In Gujarat, when bookings are otherwise heavy pre-December 15 in wake of Kamurta — considered an inauspicious period for religious reasons — sales teams at car retailers are staring at glass facades.

The strong slump in November and a near 40% down December is what I will carry forward in 2017. If things do not change, I fear layoffs in backoffices and sales teams, says a BMW retailer who confesses that marketing events with CII too have failed to cheer customers.

SIAM director general Vishnu Mathur says while foot-falls fell dramatically at the retail-end, normalcy is begin-ning to return. “However, conversions are yet to be seen as car buying has become a discretionary purchase with

customers focussing on essentials,” he says hoping liquidity in the market in coming

months should jack up sentiments and hence, buying.

shramana.ganguly@timesgroup.com

Digital goes beyond

‘communication’ and ‘engagement’

One of the most signifi-cant impacts of tech-

nology and digitiza-tion of commu-nication on the

auto industry can be seen off line, in

dramatically reduced number of visits to deal-

erships and showrooms. As Google’s director, Vikas

Agnihotri puts it, “Earlier people visited a dealership three to four times, but thanks to the digital ecosystem they show up fewer times now. 75% of car buyers research online before hitting the dealership.” Rahul Gautam, VP - marketing, Ford India, says the online ex-perience has become the de-ciding factor, “beginning from primary research to online reviews leading up to online purchase. Contrary to previ-ous years, the customer walk-ing into a dealership is more informed and aware (not to miss

connected) than ever, keeping the sales teams on their toes

or shall we say, tablets.” It’s beyond followers, fans and likes, video-blogs and engagement scores. Where the real transfor-mation has taken place is in an auto brand’s product development and marketing. Both Hyundai and Maruti

have internal

teams with a sharply defined dig-

ital mandate. Hyundai is using big data and AI to

forecast the sale of vehicles at a brand and company level for the

next 30 to 60 days. Czech carmaker Skoda has realised the importance of seamless connectivity and thus the need for in-car infotainment up-grades. Says Ashutosh Dixit, direc-tor - sales & marketing, Skoda India, “Younger customers want things to be seamless from smartphone to a car’s smart infotainment since it is part of his digital world, not just a means of transport anymore.”

Gen-Y is a must-have in the plan The youth market is the best poach-ing ground for auto-brands. And with good reason. As an auto-mar-keter points out, “The age of a car customer in the past five years has reduced by 10 years and the priori-ties of this consumer class has also changed.” It is less about long-term from financial security and fixed deposits and more about the next

iPhone, the next car, and the next party on Friday night. Consume today and save later seems to be the mantra, which is great news for most marketers. Tata Motors has been working hard to become rele-

vant to a younger demographic with a slew of new launches – Tiago and the soon to be launched Hexa. Even the quintessential luxury brand Mercedes-Benz is targeting a much younger audience with the conver-gence of a new design language and new generation cars like A-Class or the recently launched CLA.

W hen TVS Motor Company launched Apache RTR series for the millennial TG, realising their short attention span, it chose to en-gage through snackable content and created ‘gone in 6 seconds’ that deliv-ered messaging around the bike’s ac-celeration, shares Arun Siddharth, vice-president marketing – motorcy-cles, TVS Motor Company.

Premiumisation becomes all pervasiveThose old enough to have pre-lib-eralisation memories, recall the Standard 2000, the most premium car of the 1980s. A car so premi-um, its stylish low undercarriage memorably got wedged on the tiny hill-sized speed breaker outside this writer’s school. These days, premium vehicles are not the white elephants they once were. And own-ing a car or bike with some flaunt value is an impulse that manifests quickly. The drive for premium cor-responds to the start of this decade and is set to continue according to Hyundai’s senior VP, sales and marketing, Rakesh Srivastava. It’s driven by the consumer’s desire to stand out from the crowd as a lead-er and finally to come across as unique. Even in the biking segment,

T VS Motor ’s Siddhar th says, “We ex p ec t f ut u re growth to be sustained in the premium segment as cus-tomers opt for bikes that reflect their evolving lifestyle choices.” It’s resulted in positioning Apache series as a performance oriented bike. The brand recently clocked 2 million in sales. What automak-ers will have to deal with though is expectations of premium and aspirational features moving into every segment, irrespective of price points. As an auto CMO who doesn’t wish to be identified puts it, “People have learnt from the Nano story that even if you want to spend `1 lakh you still have aspiration.”

Safety is finally becoming a real concernNot too long ago, we remember an ad executive pointing to a glaring error in a car advert. The kids in the backseat weren’t wearing seat-belts. And it wasn’t the first time car or bike ads showed passengers

and drivers flouting safety norms. This, perhaps unwitting, careless-ness accurately reflects Indians’ general attitude toward road safe-ty. However, practically every car marketer worth his salt has taken

u p t h e cause. The world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer, Hero

launched its Ride Safe India CSR initiative last year with sev-eral on-ground pr og r a m me s like road safety clubs and vans to spread awareness. Backed by a series of PSA films like the one about a drunk driver re-incarnated as a cockroach about to be eaten by “lizu” (lizard). Hyundai is actively working toward establish-ing a “Caring Brand” image through CSR campaigns l i ke #B eT heB et ter Guy starring brand ambassador Shahrukh Khan. Toyota became the first company in the mass market to stand-ardise front dual SRS airbags across the Etios series. But what’s truly encouraging is that customers are demand-ing safety feature upgrades as well. Sometimes forsaking a state of the art music system for two extra airbags. For carmakers positioning their brands as ‘safe’ in addition to stylish-enough-to -be -neigh-bour’s-envy has never been more important. As Dixit of Skoda puts it, “Investment in safe-ty in a car is invest-ment in the brand.”

Continued on Pg 3 >>

Demonetisation has given cardealerships the blues, as customers post-pone their car purchases. By Shramana Ganguly

It didn’t take much time for Vishal Yadav, an agriculturist in Bhamra village of Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district, to decide to buy his first car. “It had to be a Shahrukh Khan car,” recalls Yadav, who went to the nearest rural sales outlet of Hyundai and bought a Grand i10 in the first week of November. “Now, Shahrukh Khan has come to the village.”

Yadav is not the only villager to drive the car endorsed by the Bollywood superstar. Hyundai, the second largest carmaker in India by volume, has seen its rural sales jump from 14.5% in 2011 to 23.2% in 2016.

Rakesh Srivastava, senior vice-president (sales & marketing) Hyundai Motors India, attributes this to a growing econo-my that has substantially scaled up busi-ness avenues in rural markets. Rising pur-chasing power of customers, coupled with higher disposable income, has opened a door of opportunity. In 2015, over 24% of Grand i10, 21% of i20 and 19% of Eon sales came from rural and semi-urban markets. These markets account for over 30% of the sales for India’s biggest carmaker, Maruti.

Experts are not surprised to see auto brands rushing to the hinterland. Hurrying them along is the grim reality of urban India: choked city roads, people opting for car shares and taxi services and cars — unless a Merc or BMW — losing some of the flaunt value.

Even Mercs are looking further afield. “We have seen the markets beyond metros grow in the last 5 to 10 years; hence our marketing strategy has evolved to address them,” says Michael Jopp, VP - sales and

marketing Mercedes Benz India. Jessie Paul, founder of marketing ad-

visory firm Paul Writer, contends that growth of car ownership in Indian cities is unlikely to follow the pattern of devel-oped economies or even China. The lack of infrastructure juxtaposed with the shar-ing economy is likely to cause ownership saturation much earlier. Urban India, she predicts, may move directly to a developed public transportation system. “As such, rural India looks more promis-ing at least for the next decade,” she says.

Nissan, which started its India journey five years back, is also gearing up to make most of this opportunity. “Datsun redi-GO has been selling well in tier III and ru-ral markets like Solan, Muzarffarpur, Chhindwara and Nagercoil,” says Arun Malhotra, managing director of Nissan Motors India. Recently, rural India has seen a phenomenal change in consump-tion patterns, which now resemble those of urban consumers. “Rural consumers are more aspirational and strive to purchase branded and high quality products,” he adds. While Nissan has a market share of over 2%, it sees a significant contribution from tier II, III and rural markets in its push to take its share to 5% by 2020.

Auto experts reckon low penetration of

cars in rural India — just four cars per 1000 people — make it a handsome market.

“A car is still a status symbol and has aspirational value in rural India,” says Subrata Ray, senior group vice president at ratings firm ICRA. There are certain cus-

tomer segments who can afford to splurge on luxurious goods and swanky cars.

Plus of late, carmakers have focused on two big concern areas which earlier impeded growth: proximity to a service centre and maintenance cost. They are

educating customers and improving awareness, or showcasing products in mobile vans at rural fairs and other local events. “Availability of financing in ru-ral areas was also a challenge few years back, which is now addressed to a large extent,” adds Ray.

But do carmakers need to learn new tricks? From a psychographic

point, Paul of marketing ad-visory firm Paul Writer,

observes, a person in rural India watches the same movies, buys the same clothes, eat the same food as his urban counter-part with similar income. And so

in communication terms, changes may be unneces-

sary. “It is more in terms of acknowledging realities of rural

roads, longer trips, larger families and better parking,” she says. Srivastava of Hyundai, for his part, is already work-ing on a rural-centric approach with a dedicated team to understand the market, spot new trends, identify customer prefer-ences and create innovative strategies to increase awareness and sales.

However, all these efforts might come to a naught as demonetisation threatens to

send the hinterland drive careening off the road. A bunch of carmakers, includ-ing the likes of Maruti and Hyundai, are reportedly scheduling shutdowns which might last as long as 15 days to cope with cash crunch. The worst market to hit, at least in the near and medium term, is ru-ral since most consumers use cash to buy cars. It’s particularly ironic considering a favourable monsoon was expected to trigger a rise in discretionary spend ac-cording to ICRA’s Ray.

And this could just be the beginning of trou-bled times. As Ray points out, “The cash flows for the farming community depend on kharif crop sales that commenced in October and November. The cash crunch would have impacted realisa-tions. And so farmers may have resorted to low-yield-

ing seeds saved from earlier produce for Rabi sowing as against purchasing higher quality seeds. This in turn could impact the productivity.” All of which is likely to have an cascade down to rural income in the next season too.

Will demonetisation end the fairytale growth of carmakers in rural areas or can carmakers bounce back? Well, the picture will become clear early next year. Till then, carmakers can keep humming John Denver’s classic: Take me home, country roads…

rajiv.singh@@timesgroup.com

“Oh Lord, Why Won’t They Buy A Mercedes Benz!”

HITTING COUNTRY ROADS? BUMP AHEAD… With city commuters wooed by ride-sharing, rentals and car-pooling, carmakers turn to rural markets for

salvation. But demonetisation may damn their hopes in the short to medium term. By Rajiv Singh

SIAM has reported an over 5% decline in sales across categories post demone-tisation

After Nano, people have learnt that even if you can spend only `1 lakh you still have

aspiration

For carmakers, posi-tioning their brands as safe in addition to

being stylish has never been more important

For brands like Maruti and Hyundai, rural sales account for over 30% and 23.2% respectively

The 6th GearParadigms are shifting and gears changing as the auto

industry prepares to sell more in tough times. Here’s what’s

changed and how its changed the market.

By Ravi Balakrishnan, Delshad Irani & Amit Bapna

BEAUTO SPECIAL

insi

de

Behind The Wheels

Off Roading Life In The Sub-5% Lane

Pg2 Pg2 Pg3 Pg3 Pg4

Wheels Within The ReelsStory of Maruti’s ‘Kitna

deti hai’

Marketing routes less travelled

The self-drive rental

phenomenon20

Baby, You Can Rent

My Car

THE ECONOMIC TIMES DECEMBER 14-20, 2016

CCI NG 3.5 Product: ETMumbaiBS PubDate: 14-12-2016 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEFP User: kailash.korade Time: 12-10-2016 01:12 Color: CMYK

THE ECONOMIC TIMES DECEMBER 14-20, 2016 2

“It is amazing what you can accom-plish if you do not care who gets the credit,” or so goes an old adage. The irony of there being squabbles all over the internet on who came up with this line is not lost on us.

Advertising is an industry where al-most every achievement has to be at-tributed to team effort. Yet, often one or two people end up hogging the credit, net fame and a promotion; while oth-ers who were pivotal to the campaign make do with an appreciatory mail and a lifetime of invisibility.

The credit brawl is fiercer if it’s for a successful campaign, for obvious reasons. Auto major Maruti Suzuki also had two such campaigns: ‘Papa petrol khatam hi ni hunda’ and ‘Kitna deti hai’, that came from Capital (now Publicis Capital) in 2003 and 2010 re-spectively.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? We’ll start with the confusion around who wrote ‘Kitna deti hai’. Brand Equity had done a story on the campaign in the past where Parshu Narayanan, founder of Left Hook, and the creative director on the cam-paign back in 2010, had confirmed he was behind it. Later, in an e-mail, Bobby Pawar, director and CCO, Publicis Worldwide South Asia, told us it was in fact Joy Mohanty from the then team who wrote the line. Narayanan immediately clarified that Mohanty came up with the line and maybe there was some miscom-munication earlier. We recently spoke about the incident again: “Joy gets all the stars for that campaign. But I fathered it through the system,” says Narayanan. “I have a certain level of ownership on the campaign the same way Bobby has on ‘The Great

Khali’ campaign for Ambuja Cement even though Jigar Fernandes came up with the idea,” he adds.

Lost & Found in Translation The trail on ‘Petrol khatam hi ni hunda’ was even more twisted. After speaking to seven ex-Capital-ites, including Sunil Sachdeva, the co-founder, we concluded there was con-sensus on one thing: It was Candy’s idea. Candy aka Arvind Pal Singh, co-founder of magicmushroom, was the art director on the campaign. He came up with the idea of a kid chasing a toy car. Narayanan suggested they get a Sikh kid to feature in the ad. No clarity on who came up with the actual line (you know how it works in team brainstorming), but Candy came up with the Punjabi transla-tion: Papa ki karaan, petrol khatam hi ni hunda.“Capital was made by this ad,” says

Candy. “We shifted into a bigger of-fice. Sunil and Prasad Subramaniam (co-founders) started pitching to new clients. We got LG and Electrolux. Sunil gifted me ̀ 1 lakh for making this ad,” he adds. Yet, there were instances when Candy asked industry veterans for feedback on the ad in casual con-versations and was ticked off for “also” trying to be a part of a successful cam-paign. That hurt.

The LegacyAfter all these years, for better or worse, Maruti is still remembered for these ads. Kitna deti hai remains a question that finds its way into eve-ry car purchase discussion. And it’s a position that the brand should not vacate even as it embarks on a journey to make itself more premium believes veteran marketer Shripad Nadkarni, director, Maverix Platforms. “Maruti

has for the longest time taken the platform of reliable

value.” This was built on the planks of low cost of acquisition, an inexpensive and ubiquitous service network and good Japanese technolo-gy. With the launch

of the Swift and the SX4, the carmaker

acquired a dimension of contemporary styling. Even

as the auto-major moves further down this path, Nadkarni feels, “At regular intervals they need to rein-force reliable value which is their core. It’s important in a country in the transition phase where I want value but

am not satisfied with poor qual-ity imagery and looks.”

Time then, for another reboot and another round of squabbling over

the credit list? shephali.bhatt@timesgroup.com

Tata Motors – TiagoThe challenge: To find relevance and consideration with a younger de-mographic, after years of being per-ceived as a stodgy, and thanks to the Nano, cheap brand. Vivek Srivatsa, head - marketing, passenger vehi-cles business, Tata Motors, admits “Reaching the younger audience profile has been a challenge.”

The innovation: Shares Pooja Verma, head - content, entertain-ment and sports & live, Maxus India, “Tata Motors wanted to showcase the Tiago as a car for the next genera-tion. Our objective was to enhance brand affinity through content.” While ace footballer Lionel Messi was brand ambassador for print, TV and outdoor, to lure the younger demographics Tata Motors went in for a 5-episode web-series blending branded content and storytelling by The Viral Fever (TVF).

It helped TVF find a buyer for its road trip concept that it had con-ceived of, as a part of its annual progamming calendar. An avid road trip junkie, Sumeet Vyas who acted in and co-authored the series (with Akarsh Khurana) was tired of the ‘guys on the road’ formula seen

in films like Dil Chahta Hai, The Hangover and many others. And so, he came up with a concept of sib-lings on the road. Tripling was just right for the brand: it was pitched to a young audience but was still about family values, fitting well with the new car’s position-ing, says Arunabh Kumar, creative experiment officer (CEO), TVF.

The result: The trailer for the Tripling was seen over 3 million times organically, the sort of numbers 30 sec-ond ads can only dream off after extensive media spends. Overall the prop-erty crossed 26 million plus views and the impact on brand metrics has been significant, as per a Millward Brown study: total awareness is up 75% and considera-tion by 21%. Bookings have gone up since August and have remained on a northward spike, augmented by enhanced production capacity says a very satisfied Srivatsa. Overall Tata Motors passenger vehicle mar-ketshare jumped from 4.3% in April (Tiago launch month) to 5.3% in November largely on account of the Tiago sales.

Behind The Wheels

Off Roading

Who really wrote ‘Kitna deti hai’ and ‘Khatam he ni hunda’, lines that powered Maruti Suzuki’s best loved campaigns and what explains their lasting appeal? By Shephali Bhatt

Presenting a few recent examples of auto brands that have gone down mar-keting routes less travelled. By Ravi Balakrishnan, Delshad Irani & Amit Bapna

Mere Dad Ki MarutiMaruti cast two Sikhs in its

2003 commercial at a time when religious minorities rarely found themselves depicted in ads. Parshu Narayanan recalls getting an angry mail from a fellow adman who suspected the ad made fun of Sikhs. It did anything but. “The same ad with a Kerala boy didn’t work. It worked only with the attitude of a Sardar boy,” he says. That little boy is 19 now and

studies Accounts and Finance at Jai Hind College, Mumbai. Manak Dhingra intends joining his father’s business of tyres and alloy wheels or to start his own in the future. No modelling plans in sight. Dhingra was five when he was

cast in the ad, his first. “I was scared of dogs back then. The hand you see, lifting the dog’s tail is not mine. Neither is the

one that goes inside the fish bowl,” he tells us. Dhingra admits he threw a bit of a tantrum on the set. “I wasn’t allowed to drink an orange cold drink because it would colour my tongue orange.” He did six ads after this and

even appeared in a scene from Bollywood hit Bunty aur Babli which was left on the cutting floor. Ask him what he thinks about his first ad, and he says: “It was a great way to market fuel efficiency. Plus it had a catchy tagline. I’m not saying it was great just because I was in it.” In 2012, sections of social media posted he had committed suicide. It was actually a joke on the unprecedented hike in fuel prices. A friend told him about the tweet doing the rounds. He chuckles, “People still remember the ad. There ought to be good reason for that.”

Capital was made by this ad. We shifted into a bigger office. Sunil and Prasad Subramaniam (co-founders) started pitching to new cli-ents. We got LG and Electrolux. Sunil gifted me `1 lakh for making this ad.Candy aka Arvind Pal SinghCo-founder, Magicmushroom

Mahindra – The UV rangeThe challenge: To drive home the brand’s motto “live young, live free” by building all aspects of off roading including teaching its customers to off road before throwing them into the deep end

The innovation: Mahindra could be on its way to creating the IPL of off-roading if Mahindra Club Challenge, a competition for its off-roading clubs and its portfolio of curated adventures are anything to go by. As more Indians look to escape the urban rat race and endless traffic snarls, the maker of Scorpio, Bolero, XUV, KUV and Thar, has cleverly occupied the off-road space through its Mahindra Adventures platform. The company has over 30 events in a year, ranging from short trips to long expeditions from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and even across borders to Nepal and Bhutan. Often the convoys are 30 to 40 cars long. Says Vivek Nayer, CMO – auto division, “A lot of people try experiential marketing with one

or two events in a year but the scale at which we do these things is unparalleled. We do it better than anybody else in India.” Furthermore, while it’s “nice and fashionable” to talk about off-roading, how many people know how to do it, asks Nayer. So, for those who harbour dreams of hitting the uncharted road but don’t know where to begin, Mahindra set up a training academy on 24 acres of land near Nashik in Maharashtra. “It takes serious commitment, money and expertise to conduct these things,” he says.

The result: Mahindra’s adventure escapes reinforce what the brand stands for - “live young, live free”. According to Nayer a good test of how successful these initiatives have been is the fact that adventure escapes are paid events. The entry fee for bigger expeditions like the Royal Escape which begins on 26th December is ̀ 2,00,000 for a two member team. Who said living young and free was going to be cheap?

Continued on Pg 4 >>

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Two players (Maruti and Hyundai) hold over two-third share of the Indian auto market. The next 8-10 players fight it out for the rest, making it a challeng-

ing battlefield. Even at the individual level they grapple with unique issues. FCA’s (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) challenge is to transplant the Jeep’s American legacy to a consumer who may not be acquainted with it and not ready to pay a premium for it. Renault has to sell its hatchbacks to a consumer used to flagships from Maruti and Hyundai. And Czech-born Skoda has to convince Indian consumers about its ‘value luxury’ positioning. As reported in Brand Equity, Toyota’s Etios got stuck in the taxi-groove in its early days and has been trying to shirk that tag off ever since.

Many of the brands struggling with a meagre share, are global giants powered by some of India’s hardest working mar-keters. But an examination of what they are up against illustrates why they are where they are and what they are doing to move onwards and upwards

Jo dikta hai woh bikta haiIndian consumers gravitate towards brands that sell best, figuring millions who came before them could not all be wrong. And so having sold many cars so far, allows Maruti and Hyundai to sell many more. Larger players typically

have the most comprehensive sales and service networks which makes it a cir-cle even harder to crack. Which is why

everyone from Ford to Skoda is running campaigns emphasising service and low cost of ownership.

The sub-5%ers are often unable to answer the ‘what’s new?’ questionEvery auto CMO plans for initial peaks and follows it up with regular refreshes. Sumit Sawhney, country CEO and man-aging director, Renault India counts two important trends: reduced lifecycle of cars in India and more aware Indian customers due to multiple digital plat-forms. Around 8 years back, the lifecycle was over 5-6 years, but now you have to bring in changes every 2-3 years, he adds. Companies willing to invest in such re-freshes, stand to gain.

They are not able to justify valuePartha Sinha, vice chairman and man-aging director, McCann Worldgroup had a harsh if realistic evaluation of the Indian consumer in a previous issue: “The market doesn’t care much about safety (seen any Indian using seat belts in the rear seat? Not even children!), or

build quality or engineering excellence.”The Indian consumer is ready to pay as

long as the value equation is right. The challenge is that this value-equation is constantly moving, points out Vivek Srivatsa, head marketing - passenger vehi-cle business unit, Tata Motors.

Delna Avari, management consultant and former mar-keting head for Tata Motors’ passenger vehicles division, however believes perception will always trump technology, safety, etc.; “At the end of the day, the differentiation in cars is in the mind of the consumer more than in the product itself (sorry, dear experts!).”

Features that resonate with consumers elsewhere have scant impact here; safety for instance. A WHO report from 2015, revealed a staggering 2,07,551 road traf-fic fatalities in India. And yet carmakers trying to sell models with “expensive”

safety features have an uphill task. It can be done, as Toyota found out, but it takes a lot of doing. The Japanese car maker was the first in the mass market to standard-ise front dual SRS airbags across Etios at the cost of the infotainment system. Says N Raja – senior VP and director, sales & marketing, Toyota Kirloskar Motors, initially, it was a challenging task for the dealer’s sales staff. But with explana-

tions about its importance and forthcoming safety norms, cus-tomers became receptive. The result: a sales growth of 13% for the Etios series of models post airbags standardisation.

So what hope exists for the sub-5%ers? Views Anisha Motwani, managing partner: StormTheNorm Ventures and former CMO, General Motors,

“the biggest opportunity is they are not straddled with long-seeded consumer ex-periences and expectations. In many ways they can make a clean start and write their own narrative.”

amit.bapna@timesgroup.comWITH INPUTS FROM DELSHAD IRANI

For Greg Moran, it always defied logic to buy a car. Reason: elementary maths. The numbers just don’t add up. Consider this: While the average usage of a car in a year

is less than 150 days, for another 200 days, it lies idle, depreciating in value and appreciating in cost due to maintenance. Add ever-increasing vehicular pollution in cities, choking congestion on arterial roads, and the financial burden of ownership, and the logic of not buying a car becomes apparent.

“A car is a high value, highly depreciating and highly underutilised asset,” contends Moran, co-founder of Bangalore-based self-drive car rental company Zoomcar. It does not make sense to own them, particularly when people have smarter al-ternatives, adds Moran who started the company in February 2013.

Fast forward to December 2016. In little under four years, Zoomcar has got 1 million

registered users, over 2300 vehicles and is present in 14 cities. In August this year, it raised its Series B funding of $24 million from a slew of investors in-cluding Ford Smart Mobility, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company.

“Zoomcar has disrupted the personal car owner-ship market,” he says. It offers cars on rent on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis starting from ̀ 49 per hour for a Nano and going up to ̀ 250 per hour for a CLA class. “Cars are fast becoming a communal asset,” says Moran. Younger working professionals, he points out, are increasingly choos-ing to rent cars for a month or two, instead of buying new ones as there’s no hassle of EMI payments, maintenance or insur-ance. This also enables them to change models as and when they please, he adds.

It’s not only Zoomcar that is zooming in on the massive business opportunity — an estimated ̀ 14 Billion market by 2020 — to cater to the population that swear by the utilitarian value of a vehicle.

A clutch of self-drive car rental start-ups such as Myles, Voler and Revv are changing the way people ‘own’ cars in India. Over the next few years, contend experts, the self-drive car rental segment will redefine the automobile landscape as more people move away from owning to renting.

“Car sharing and rentals are going to be defining features of the industry over the next few years,” says Abdul Majeed, partner at PwC India. The young gen-eration doesn’t believe in owning a car. It believes in using it.” This trend will continue to become sharper.”

Sakshi Vij, the founder of self-drive car rental company Myles, agrees. Started in November 2013, Myles has a fleet of over 1,200 cars, claims 1.5 lakh users, clocks between 10,000-12,000 rentals per month, is present in 22 cities and is growing at 30% every month. Over the next year, Vij plans to take the fleet strength to 8,000, which means generating over 100,000 rentals per month. And if the immediate target sounds ambitious, have a look at the target for

2020: a fleet size of 50,000 cars in 50 cities spread over 5,000 locations; one Myles car every 400 meters in a city and 5 million new members. Can it be done? Vij sounds optimistic.

“More people now prefer to rent a car over buying one,” she says. Myles offers cars for self-drive start-ing from ̀ 65 per hour for e2o, going up to ̀ 9,500 per day for a Mercedes E class.

As per a study, says Vij, over 20 personal cars are replaced with every car added in a car sharing network. She believes with lesser cars bought, space in the cities can be better utilised and de-congested. “A new culture in urban mobility is

needed,” she says, adding that Myles plans to foray into 100 cities in India. But can this new

culture have resonance in a country like India? Experts think so. The trend of shared ownership is grow-ing, says Jessie Paul, founder of mar-keting advisory firm Paul Writer. Given that it is working even in the luxury market for yachts and private

planes, there is ample potential for the model in India. Car-share growth, to a large extent, is driven by the conveni-ence of a service and once it is 100% available and reliable, one will see a drop in car ownership, she adds.

Paul contends that rentals allow people to use the right vehicle for the right purpose, and with the rising trend of renting, one might actually see a drop in individual purchases of custom-purpose vehicles such as large SUVs. In cities with public transport,

there would be more comfort in not owning a car, whereas in others it is more a substitute for a sec-ond vehicle, she adds.

Car ownership used to be a signifier of accomplish-ment and the industry’s upgrade cycle roughly par-allels the life of a consumer: from entry level hatch-backs to premium sedans. If the self drive services are making the right bet, maybe the car you can afford to rent will be as much of a status symbol as the car you own is today.

rajiv.singh@@timesgroup.com

If you aren’t Maruti or Hyundai, the road is anything but smooth for a car manufacturer in India. Here’s what the sub-5% market-share brands grapple with. By Amit Bapna

Life In The Sub-5% lane

Indian consum-ers pay for value, but value is constantly redefined

Younger working profes-sionals are increasingly choosing to rent cars for a month or two

Baby, You Can Rent My CarA bunch of self-drive car rental startups is luring millennials to opt for renting over buying. By Rajiv Singh

Continued from Page 1 >>

Women get behind the wheelAn old ad for Daewoo was built around the premise of a husband going on a drive, just so he could hold his wife’s hand. It’s an ad that history hasn’t been kind to, given the increasing number of women no longer content to just play passenger. Even the ones who have no interest in driving and thus braving the Mad Maxlevel savagery on Indian roads, are having a greater say in which cars to buy and what features to look out for. Says Ford’s Rahul Gautam, “The influence from deciding colour to critical features like six airbags in a car, has also risen. More than 20% of EcoSport sales for Ford today are influenced by women and their prefer-ence for safety of their families.” Also changing is the way women are represented in ads. While many scoot-ers and their ads have been skewed towards women, TVS went a lot further with a recent campaign for TVS Scooty Zest, according to Aniruddha Haldar , vice-president marketing – scooters, TVS Motor Company. From standard TV commercials, the brand followed 11 young women who set a record “conquering the high-est motorable road in the world on their good looking and equally competent TVS Scooty Zest 110. When this is accompanied by short films by an award-winning independent film director which speaks not about the vehicle but the experience, the narrative has changed and this is the paradigm shift,” he says.

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

The 6thGear

THE ECONOMIC TIMES DECEMBER 14-20, 2016 3

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The TumblerUnlike the “kitschy” cars of Batman-yore, these were the fi rst Batmobiles that weren’t modifi ed existing cars and were designed and made for the Christopher Nolan Batman fi lms. You could buy a street-legal Tumbler for $1 million.

Wheels Within The ReelsFrom 007’s iconic Aston Martins fi tted with surface-to-air missiles to Ram Pyari the farting VW Beetle from the 1991

Bollywood box-offi ce dud Akayla, cinema has had an interesting love affair with cars and bikes. Here’s a look at just a few of the memorable ones. By Delshad Irani

007 & Aston Martin

Mini Cooper (BMW)

The most famous philanderer and secret agent’s only lasting relationship has been with Aston Martin. Of course, there have been others like BMW, Alpha Romeo, Bentley, Lotus and more. But Bond and Aston Martin are forever. Nearly 50 years and still going strong.

The DB5 with Sean Connery, Goldfi nger 1964. According to the company website, the car’s appearance in the fi lm “saw sales of the DB5 increase and the profi le of the company grow”. It sold at auction for $4.6 million. The DB10 used in 2015’s Spectre sold for $3.5 million.

“At the time (1964), Aston were a well-known force in the world of motor racing but in Botswana, frankly, no one had ever heard of them. It was a call from

a Bond producer to the company’s HQ in Newport Pagnell that changed everything. All over the world,

Aston Martin is James Bond.” Planet Dagenham –

Jeremy Clarkson

007’s Aston Martins have had several modifi cations. Among

them, revolving number plates, tyre spikes, smoke screens, boot stowed jet packs, rear

facing water canons and surface-to-air missiles.

One of the most celebrated ads in history is ‘Think Small’ for the Beetle.

KITT, the AI automobile

from Knight Rider - Pontiac Trans Am and Ford Shelby GT500KR

Camaro ChevroletBumblebee from Transformers,2007

The Italian Job (1969 & 2003 remake) and Mr Bean. The Beatles’ George Harrison was a Mini fan. His psychedelic colored 1966 Radford Mini de Ville also appeared in the band’s fi lm Magical Mystery Tour.

1949 Hudson CommodoreDriving Miss Daisy, 1989

Beetle (Volkswagen)

‘Striped Tomato’, a Ford Gran Torino from the TV series and fi lm Starsky & Hutch

The iconic Beetle fi rst featured as Herbie in the 1968 fi lm The Love Bug. In Bollywood she is Ram Pyari in the 1991 fi lm Akayla starring Amitabh Bachchan.

Vespa Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in the 1953 classic fi lm Roman Holiday. It was a ride

that won Hepburn an Oscar and made Vespa a fashion

statement

The DeLorean Back To The Future, 1985

Continued from Page 2 >>

Off Road...Maruti Suzuki - S-CrossThe challenge: To explain the crossover concept to an audience unfamiliar with a SUV-sedan hybrid. Sanjeev Handa, vice president and head of market-ing, Maruti Suzuki points out, “S-Cross was a very discontinuous product and crossover was firmly associated with SUV. We had to ex-plain the ability of the car to take the rough with the smooth.”

The innovation: S-Cross had come up with a new commer-cial, about an office goer who zooms off to his farmhouse complete with horses, to convey a car that could be driven to work and to more remote locations over weekend. The brand was also trying to promote the #Livethecrossoverlife. One route was the banner on YouTube, which is where Maruti Suzuki got a little more adventurous. Once a user allowed YouTube access to his or her location, it mapped the latitude and longitude and would offer sug-gestions to a few crossover destinations nearby. And then roll the commercial. Says Handa, “The connect between the crossover life and the commercial became clear. Nobody provides map locations like Google. We researched those 100 destinations and fed them into the system manually. We are happy to note that we are the first ones to do this sort of thing in the country.” Maruti Suzuki’s agency partner

was the digital division of Hakuhodo/Grapes Digital. Vikas Agnihotri, director, Google, adds, “There were areas around pretty much most of the targeted cities and towns that could be a driving getaway at a motorable distance. I manage travel as a vertical and we saw a rising trend among many young travellers to drive out on long weekends. The integration be-tween maps and ad formats reflected what the client needed and the trends we were seeing in consumer behaviour.”

The result: According to Handa, Nexa’s subscriber base on YouTube increased 100x and the site saw a rise in traf-fic of 200% after the one day promotion. There were 60 mil-lion impressions on the banner. It generated 4998 hours or 208 days worth of interactions in a single day. The residual impact was 39% higher traffic on the Nexa site for the next six days. Finally, he’s happy to report sales of 2,000 to 2,500 every month.

Tata Motors - T1 Prima Truck RacingThe challenge: To increase interest in and the stature of truck driving: a thankless, risky job that is finding fewer and fewer takers. “We’ll buy a 100 trucks if you give us a 100 drivers” as a truck company owner memorably told the Tata Motors team. The dual challenge was to inspire young men being lured away by easier employment as security guards and delivery boys to consider becoming drivers and to instil a sense of pride in existing truckers.

The innovation: UT Ramprasad, head – marketing communications at Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles Business Unit says in-stilling an emotional connect or sense of pride has been a critical part of its strategy. For Ace, Tata Motors went with the line Teen chakke mehnat ke ek izzat ka instead of the more obvious route of a four wheeler at the price of a three wheeler.

Tata Motors came up with T1 Prima Racing in 2014 and it is now three seasons old. While anyone who has ever driven on an Indian highway doesn’t believe Indian truckers need any inducement to race, there was still merit to building a large prestigious event, complete with internationally renowned truck racers. It’s held at the Buddh racing circuit built around a format similar to that of the IPL with regional teams. Since truck racing was not a well recognised sport, the racing league relied heavily on global talent for the first two seasons, starting

an academy to train local truckers interested in being the fastest. Plans include going to truck nakas and mandis to pick

drivers and turn it into a reality show format.

The result: Truck racing has been growing in popularity year on year. The first year drew 40,000 people and by the sec-ond year, fake passes had started to get printed resulting in overcrowding and some small riots. The target is now 1 lakh attendees. Truck dealers are owning teams and Tata is scout-ing for a cosponsor. “In one or two years, T1 has become the F1 of truck racing,” says Ramprasad. It’s also helped Tata Motors start an outreach for drivers.

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

THE ECONOMIC TIMES DECEMBER 14-20, 2016 4

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