The Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa, and it is Perodua's newest overseas market. The compact car company has launched their smallest car, the Perodua Axia there, which is quite a popular tourist destination. The Axia will be offered in E MT, G AT, SE and AV variants at promotional prices of 235,000 (*RM71,500), 265,000 (*RM80,600), 275,000 (*RM83,700) and 290,000 (*RM88,300) Seychellois Rupees respectively.
Quite expensive if you consider the Axia is priced at around RM30,000 here in Malaysia, but when you factor in local import taxes and other costs, you can see why the tiny car is priced as such. What? You think Malaysia has expensive car prices? I think many other countries, especially these small island nations actually charge a heck of a lot of import duties (Note the Perodua Bezza in Sri Lanka - RM103K).
Anyway, that isn't the point. The point is that Perodua has entered into another market thereby spreading their wings a little bit further. Since the Seychelles is quite a popular tourist destination (with a large volume of African and European tourists), brand awareness will definitely be increased as more people would recognise the Perodua logo. It will definitely help future expansion elsewhere.
All variants are powered by a 1.0 litre 1KR-VE engine with intelligent variable valve timing that is connected to a five-speed manual transmission on the E MT variant and a four-speed electronically-controlled automatic transmission on the other three variants.
Perodua Sales Sdn Bhd Managing Director Dato’ Dr Zahari Husin says that this is a new beginning for the company, he said “The Seychelles offers a good opportunity for us to expose our brand to people of various nationalities who travel to the island nation for their holidays. We believe that this will give us greater prospects for future markets.”
As for the aurhorised distriburos, Perodua has appointed SF Hybrid Motors Pty Ltd as the official Perodua distributor for the Seychelles, handling both sales and after-sales. Perodua has also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to market Perodua models in the Seychelles to private and fleet buyers. Usually in the case of small island nations, fleet sales usually means rental cars for tourist and other taxi services which is also used to ferry tourists. So it does help with brand recognition further.
“While we acknowledge that our export performance is still not significant at the moment, we are seriously looking to expand.
“We are working with our partner Daihatsu by leveraging on their experience and extensive network to map a sustainable and profitable export plan,” Dato’ Dr Zahari said.
“We are honoured to bring Perodua to the Seychelles. We believe in Perodua and are even backing it up with a three-year warranty up to 100,000 km. The Perodua Axia is the perfect fit for the Seychelles market. It delivers in all aspects – style, safety, security, ingenuity, low running costs as well as affordable spare parts and servicing,” said SF Hybrid Motors Director Mr Christophe Larue.
This is actually Perodua’s second current African export market. The other the island nation of Mauritius, where it has sold over 3,000 vehicles since 1996. So note that Perodua has decided to place its mark in the Indian Ocean, where the three export markets have been mentioned. A different move from others, but one that is actually quite logical in terms of brand awareness and also logistics, as these nations aren't that far away from Malaysia and that all three markets are basically in the same geographical location.
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