On a glorious Monday morning on the 16th of July 2012, we popped into the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi to get an update from Anurag Mehrotra, VP – Marketing at Ford India on the launch of New Classic Titanium variant.
The Ford Classic (the old Ford Fiesta) is a critical part of the Ford portfolio as it enables Ford to offer a glide path which enables customers to stay within the Ford family and smoothly transition from Figo to the Classic to the new Fiesta. The Classic Titanium is priced at Rs. 6.86L for the petrol variant and 7.82L for the diesel variant and comes with a 2 year. 100,000 km warranty. New features include a stereo system equipped with Bluetooth, fresh interiors, new front grille, drive-away locks and speed sensing volume controls.
Ford is trying as hard to localize as possible to bring down product costs and has achieved 80-85% localization for the Classic and the Figo. The 100,000 km warranty is part of Ford efforts to constantly try and reduce cost of ownership. They have also opened a Parts Distribution Centre (PDC) outside Gurgaon towards their goal of even greater availability of spares.
Anurag mentioned that the entry level sedan segment i.e. 5 – 8.5L for petrol and 7 – 8L for diesel is growing at a 30-40% rate with about 6,000 cars being sold each month. Other interesting tid bits include that there are about 400,000 customers in the Ford portfolio in India as of today. Of these, 150,000 would be for the Figo alone. 75-80% of all cars sold by Ford in India today would be diesel.
We also asked Anurag our favourite question i.e., when was the Eco-Sport being launched. He laughed and said “soon”. Though we’re hearing rumours from the market that it could be around October 2012.
If you want to know a little bit more about Anurag Mehrotra, then read on. He reports directly to Nigel Wark, Executive Director, Marketing, Sales & Service. At Ford, Anurag is responsible for product marketing and consumer marketing. Prior to joining Ford India, Anurag was Vice President – Corporate Marketing for 3 years at WNS Global Services, a leading business process outsourcing company, where he was responsible for lead generation and brand building in North America and Europe. Prior to WNS, he worked as Vice President – Marketing and Communications for 4 years with Accenture India where he was responsible for marketing and communication for Accenture’s delivery centers for Technology and the India consulting business. He has a degree in Electronics Engineering and is a regular speaker at Internet Industry events in India.
The Ford Classic competes directly with the Toyota Etios and Maruti Dzire, both of which currently outsell the Classic by a substantial number.
