Eyeing 5% market share goal by 2030

In five years, Renault plans to sell close to 500,000 cars in India, which is more than 12 times the current level. The company sold 38,000 cars in the financial year ending March, 2025. Chief executive officer Venkatram Mamillapalle spoke to Narayanan V about the company's aggressive growth strategy and the new Design Centre in Chennai, the French auto major's largest outside France. Excerpts:

- VENKATRAM MAMILLAPALLE, COUNTRY CEO AND MD, RENAULT INDIA OPERATIONS

In five years, Renault plans to sell close to 500,000 cars in India, which is more than 12 times the current level. The company sold 38,000 cars in the financial year ending March, 2025. Chief executive officer Venkatram Mamillapalle spoke to Narayanan V about the company's aggressive growth strategy and the new Design Centre in Chennai, the French auto major's largest outside France. Excerpts:

What will the Renault Design Centre in Chennai do?

From drawing a line on the board to finishing a car's styling, the designers in the new studio will do complete 360-degree designing of Renault's future models. The folks at the design studio are basically involved from sketch to the car's finish through drawings. Then they put the dimensions to it—like each part has to have this much length, width, size etc. All those definitions happen in the design studio. It then goes to engineering, where each part gets designed and manufactured separately.

Earlier, all these design works were done in Paris, and then it would come to RNTBCI, where they convert those designs into drawings—CAD designs into parts. An ICE-engine car has about 2,000 parts. Instead of France, we are going to do all those designs in India—in the same time zone, for Indian customers, with Indian engineers sitting here and making cars for India.

But you already have RNTBCI?