Kia Motors India wraps up four-car, 26-city roadshow

Korean carmaker’s brand-building exercise covering over 15,000km across India concludes.

By Autocar Pro News Desk

29 Mar 2019

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The Kia Design Tour in India showcased the Niro hatchback and Carnival MPV.

The Kia Sportage SUV seen here with the Carnival MPV.

Yong S Kim, executive director and CSO, Kia Motors India, during the Kia Design Tour 2019.

Kia Motors India, the Indian arm of the world’s eighth largest automobile maker, has concluded the second phase of its ‘Design Tour’ in the country.

The 26-city road show, that travelled 15,000km over two months, was aimed at raising awareness of Kia Motors through display of the Niro hatchback, Carnival and Sportage SUV. With an aim to be amongst the top five automakers within three years in India, the extensive brand-building exercise commenced from Jamshedpur on January 16 and concluded in Bhopal on March 15.

The Korean carmaker’s first product launch in India will be an SUV based on the SP Concept showcased at the Auto Expo 2018. Yesterday, Kia Motors revealed the SP Signature concept at the Seoul Motor Show. This concept is an evolution of the Kia SP Concept, which is essentially meant to be a new small SUV for global markets and previews the near-production-spec Kia SP2i SUV, which is set to be launched in India later in 2019.

On January 29, 2019, Kia Motors India’s manufacturing facility in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh began trial production of the SP2i SUV. The facility, which has a manufacturing capacity of around 300,000 units per annum, is expected to begin series production in the second half of 2019. With a target of launching a new car every six months after the launch of the first product in India, Kia is planning to expand its portfolio to at least five vehicles by 2021.

According to Manohar Bhat, Head of Marketing and Sales, Kia Motors India, “The Design Tour is a great platform where multiple stakeholders – dealers, customers and opinion leaders – get to be a part of, and experience the distinctive and stunning design of Kia cars. Through this activity, we were able to gauge the excitement and anticipation around Kia amongst the masses across the country. We have received a phenomenal response from every city, and we are happy that we were able to showcase a glimpse of great design and technology of Kia before the launch of our mid-SUV in India.”