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Skoda Auto plans to launch eight cars in India
By siliconindia staff writer
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Saturday, 08 May 2004, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: In an aggressive bid to double its sales and garner 20 per cent market share in India, Skoda Auto will launch seven models and variants in the next one year, a top company official said on Friday.
"We plan to launch one more car in early 2006," Skoda Auto India general manager (sales and marketing) Bipin Datar told a news agency.
"We have lined up a slew of models as we aim to have 20 per cent market share in the segments we operate. We also plan to sell 8,500 cars this year," he said.
The Indian arm of the Volkswagen group company will launch luxury sedan 'Superb' by May-end, 'Octavia Rider' in the first week of next month, 1.8 litre turbo petrol version of premium sedan 'Octavia' by the end of July, 'Octavia' diesel automatic in August and premium sedan 'Fabia' in the first quarter next year.
The company also plans to launch compact passenger vehicle 'Roomster' by 2006.
The Czech carmaker's Indian arm sold 4,656 units last year, Datar said. "But we suffered five months of production loss as we were shifting our production base to completely knocked down (CKD) operations from semi knocked down (SKD)."
Skoda Auto India has sold 100 units of premium sedan 'Laurin & Klement' in the last 10 days and targets to sell 800 'L&Ks' by December this year.
"We have received tremendous response for 'L&K'. After selling 100 units in 10 days, we have scaled up our target to 800 units in 2004. We have to slightly delay the 'Fabia' launch as our hands are full because of the enthusiastic response to 'L&K'," Datar said.