Renault launches Duster at Rs 7.19 lakh

This has been necessitated with the launch of the Renault Duster compact SUV on Wednesday. With this, the Franco-Japanese alliance's Chennai plant is now close to filling up the installed annual capacity of 4 lakh units (on three shifts and two lines). "With the first production line running at three shifts, we began the second line in March where the second shift has also been started now. We should soon be utilising almost the full capacity of 4 lakh a year after we add the third shift here," Mr Marc Nassif, Renault India's MD, told Business Line.

Exports, top priority

With exports a high priority, the other volume models made at the facility are the Renault Pulse, Nissan Micra and Sunny entry sedan. It also makes the Renault Fluence and assembles the Nissan Teana. In January, Mr Kou Kimura, CEO and Managing Director, Renault-Nissan Automotive India, told this newspaper that the capacity at Chennai would be doubled to 8 lakh units by 2016. The alliance is targeting a 10 per cent market share in India.

Duster launch

The Duster is the most important model for Renault's India strategy, since the carmaker began its innings with the Fluence, Koleos and the Pulse last year.As an inaugural offer, the compact SUV has an aggressive starting price of Rs 7.19 lakh (petrol) and it marks the birth of almost a new segment in the domestic car market.