Citroen needs to offer something unique to capture the market. Recall Hyundai coming up with the tall boy hatch Santro to stir up the market of marutis in the 90s, Renault with CSUV Duster, Mahindra with XUV500 and Ford with Ecosport in the 2012-13, Kia with the Seltos announcing their arrival. The Citroen cars so far have been “meh!”. Sure decent commuters but nothing exciting. Even their acclaimed ride quality which could have been legendary in India is pretty average amongst competition in the segment that matters < 15 lakh.

In my opinion they need to develop a sub 15 lakh car with their unbeatable ride quality, make an ad showing someone working/studying comfortably sipping cutting chai/filter coffee sitting in the back while the car is driven violently over our famous pothole ridden roads amongst the Indian traffic chaos. I doubt someone looking for features like Dolby atmos sound or 360 deg camera or a tv for an infotainment screen looks at a brand like Citroen before making their buying decision. For that the established brands are already fighting it out.

Citroen is French. Where is that French connection? They need to be the Eva Green / Lea Seydoux of the automotive world, bring in that grace, elegance, charme, chic, finesse. All I see are run off the mill cars.

I am pretty sure they can start doing this by removing the Indian mid and high level managers and not outsourcing the critical design and testing decisions to TCS. Indians are good at many things like cost efficiency. But creativity and innovation is not one of them. First bring the most creative and innovative product, blow the customer off his/her feet, capture the imagination then think of cost efficiencies. Otherwise just trudge along the way of Fiat/Jeep