For several months he worked tirelessly to infuse confidence among existing and prospective car buyers. He has been doing the rounds of dealerships and media house trying to convince people that all was well with the Indian subsidiary of the company. GM India also launched a campaign ‘There for India, There for you’. The company dropped its brand Ambassador Saif Ali Khan and thought that it was best if Karl Slym addressed the problem himself.

He rightly identified that that the existing consumers may fear that the supply of spare parts would be affected and that the re-sale value of the car would drop.

In the last one year, even before the economic slowdown started, Karl Slym had set on a mission to increase dealerships in India. These are low cost dealerships which require less investment and can easily operate with two-three models at their disposal. Some of these are owned by larger dealers of the General Motors. This strategy has helped General Motors sell more cars and reach a larger number of consumers. Almost 80 percent of them are already profitable. Normally, it would take six months to get these volumes through mainstream dealerships.

He also pushed for dealerships in rural regions of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. He also devised a new strategy, the three year free service on the Spark. Buyers of other cars could also purchase the same services. This scheme also guaranteed a maximum of expenditure on service for three years on a car. Anything in excess the company promised to reimburse.

To address the resale value of the car, GM India ran a pilot scheme Chevy OK at 11 dealerships where customers can sell and exchange cars. These outlets have seen a flow of people who owned GM’s previous cars the Opel Corsa and Astra. It has helped the company sell new cars in exchange for used cars.

In order to build confidence in existing Indian customers, even as the parent company General Motors filed for bankruptcy on June 1, Slym launched mega service camps in major cities in India. This scheme will be on till the end August. The camps were given a festival look with lost of music and food made available to car owners and their families. Slym was relying on the goodwill that will flow from the word of mouth from their existing customers.

From June 1 onwards, GM India stationed 35 key officials at critical dealerships which fetched it the highest volumes to address consumer queries. Consumers were free to interact with these officials about the problems in General Motors as a whole and Indian subsidiary in particular.

General Motors is a not a very big player in India, though it has six products in its Indian portfolio. They include Spark, Aveo, Aveo U-VA, Optra Tavera and Captiva. During the fiscal year 2008-09, its share of 1.55 million units helped it gain only 4 percent of the market share. Sales are falling drastically, but General Motors India thinks it has space to grow, more than ever before. The GM officials feel that the India is not very different from China, as it has the same strengths and drawbacks like the domestic market. It has already invested more than a US$ 1 billion in India over the past five years and plans to invest more despite the fallout of the bankruptcy. There is too much at stake for the company to let go off India as an irrelevant market.

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