New Delhi, Dec 16 (IANS): The Automotive Skills Development Council (ASDC) and the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) have joined hands with Google India to bridge the digital skill gap in the country's auto dealerships and build their capacity in this critical growth driver.

Industry experts believe that some customers may not wish to visit a dealership as many times as before prior to making a purchase decision, and hence, there is an urgent need for automotive retail to become virtual, lean, and flexible, said a joint statement.

Tailor-made by Google India under its 'Grow with Google' initiative, the training programme will be conducted through a series of webinars on digital marketing, hyper local marketing, and full funnel strategy on YouTube.

"The focus of the program is on empowering dealer principals to adopt digital tools and platforms to engage with customers. In its second phase, the program also aims to train frontline sales and marketing executives via a series of vernacular executional videos. This will be followed by an online assessment and certification by Google India, ASDC and FADA," it said.

Nikhil Bansal, Head of Automotive, Google India, said: "Over the years, the window to influence purchase decisions through offline efforts has become smaller. The average number of visits to dealerships in India fell by 50 per cent over the last three years from 2016 to 2019. And now, Covid-19 has made consumers further reluctant to visit car dealerships, and as a result, walk-ins are even fewer."

To aid business recovery, auto players are encouraged to take their dealerships to customers online.

ASDC Chairman Nikunj Sanghi said: "Existing skills will require a lot of redefinition and skilling will play a major role when we re-enter the new world. We need to train the workforce on how to use digital tools and train the entire ecosystem to monitor their efficiency. Hence to maintain market continuity, both ASDC and FADA, with the help of Google, are helping the dealerships become as active as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on digital platforms."

The ASDC assessment and certification will help in boosting the competency and competitiveness of industry stakeholders, he said.

He also said that the skill development programme and the digitisation of the processes by dealers would be cost effective in the long run.

The initiative focuses on training over 20,000 auto dealerships across the country to build an online presence, and providing digitalskill training to over 1 lakh auto dealers across the marketing and sales divisions.