Interview with Guillaume Sicard, President, Nissan India Operation

We talk to Nissan India Operation President, Guillaume Sicard, about the company’s future plans and their two new products – the GT-R and X-Trail Hybrid.

Do you plan to separate the Nissan and Datsun dealerships?
Eventually yes, but not on a short-term basis because you need to invest a lot of money to build a new network – and, to be able to do that, you need to have a certain level of sales volumes. The big idea behind launching Datsun was to launch the brand with the support of the Nissan brand – and to avoid the extra cost of building another new sales network. So that’s the policy we’re following right now. Once we reach a certain level of sales, we will separate both the brands, but first that level of sales has to be achieved to ensure the profitability of our dealers.

You’re launching the X-Trail only as a hybrid. Why not launch the diesel version too?
At Nissan, we have two keywords – ‘Innovation and Excitement.’ And I want to make sure that everything we do embraces those two values. So, when we decided to launch the X-Trail, the natural choice for us was to launch it with the diesel engine and four-wheel drive – which is the classical way of looking at things. But my thought was that, if we wanted to showoff our brand and be different, and if we want to be future ready, we needed to take the bet to launch it in hybrid form. We actually took this decision a year ago, and at that point of time no one was talking about emissions, pollution, and these issues. However, because I’ve worked in other markets, I could feel that this was going to be a major issue and a discussion point in India. And this is why I wanted to first start with the hybrid to show the best of our technology. We want to express something different, and we will bring the best technology to India. The X-Trail Hybrid has only been launched in three other markets in the world, and India is going to be the fourth country. It hasn’t even been launched in Australia, Europe and the US, and we will be launching the car here before those markets. This shows that we care about India as a manufacturer, and the fact that we can anticipate customer needs as well – because there is now a need for cleaner vehicles in India, and this car serves that purpose.

Why did it take you so long to launch the GT-R?
I remember when I arrived in India a year-and-a-half ago, everyone kept asking me about when we would launch the GT-R. So, when I went back to headquarters, we looked at the numbers – and it was a big challenge for us, as there would be a lot of training that would be required, as well as the need to create a sales structure for selling a small number of cars. Plus, it will be a CBU, so the car will be expensive. So I had to convince my colleagues that this was a good move, as we have a lot of passion about sports cars and this is one of the best performance cars in the industry today – and now the car will finally arrive in India in September. It took time because we had to convince our colleagues about the business case, but now that’s done!