Renault India bets high on new Duster

Chennai: French automaker Renault India is betting high on the launch of all-new Duster, which helped the company establish the brand in 2012, to increase its market share from less than one per cent in the 2026-2027 financial year. The company, which bought the entire Renault-Nissan plant in Oragadam near here last year, also hopes to enhance the operational capacity of the factory from the current 48 per cent to 70 per cent by the next fiscal.

M Venkatram, Managing Director, Renault India, told a media roundtable here that the India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will help “exponentially increase” the export of cars and automotive components from India to the EU, to offset the effects from the other side of the West.

“Once the FTA is operationalized, we can start exporting left-hand driven cars into the competitive EU market. This helps EU players to exploit India and trigger a lot of exports. The FTA will be a significant boost to the automotive industry and the employment creation is massive,” he said.

“The localisation of components is already huge and with this agreement, companies can also hope to export auto components,” Venkatram added.

On the launch of the new Duster, the mid-size SUV which created waves for years together before it was discontinued a few years ago, the Renault India MD said the company decided to capitalise on the nostalgia since two generations have fond memories of the vehicle.

“The new Duster keeps the DNA of the old Duster and it has the most powerful powertrain in the segment. The car is new but we have kept the DNA intact,” he said. To a question on the expectations from the Duster while re-launches of vehicles by other brands have not worked in the past, Venkatram said, “we did our homework and we got positive results. The analysis and data says it will help and we believe nostalgia will help,” he said.

On the company’s market share in India which is less than 1 per cent, the top executive said the company hopes to increase its market share by “at least three times” with the launch of the new Duster and the new Duster hybrid which hit the markets later this year.

“We have bought the full plant (Renault-Nissan) with an installed capacity of 4.8 lakh vehicles per annum. If we don’t have a definite plan, why will we buy an entire plant? Our current utilization is around 48 per cent and we hope to increase it to 70 per cent by the end of 2026-2027 fiscal,” he added.