By the end of this year, Fiat India is planning to open about twenty new dealerships across India, which would result in breaking down the Tata-Fiat sales partnership. The major reason behind parting ways with Tata Motors was that the partnership on the sales front was not in favor of this Italian car marker. However, now Fiat India will not hire any new dealers but the existing one will run the individual Fiat dealerships. This means, that Fiat will now not have to pass through the hectic procedure of classifying new dealers who are keen to open up a fresh Fiat dealership. The Tata-Fiat alliance dealership will be continued in smaller towns as it doesn’t make any sense for the Italian brand to set up a new individual dealership there. The reason behind this is the limited sales from small cities and towns of India.
Fiat will make its strategy official by next month. Another thing that remains unclear is that whether Tata-Fiat will carry on servicing Fiat cars in small cities and towns of India as Fiat will have its independent dealerships in big cities of the country. According to Mr. Rajeev Kapoor, who is the MD of Fiat India, currently, there are only 2 exclusive Fiat Showrooms. This figure will be hiked up to 25 in about twenty locations by the end of 2012. These new independent showrooms of Fiat will be run by the current dealers who operate at Tata-Fiat showrooms. The details of the strategy will be announced soon and new showrooms will be opened this year itself. However, in smaller town, the Tata-Fiat dealership alliance will be continued as per the requirement. Therefore, now it would be interesting to see how thing work out for Fiat and how much does this help in increasing the sales figures of Fiat in India.
