Indian-built Škoda Kylaq’s European launch ‘very much on the table’, says boss

Skoda’s rise in India has been one of the more interesting success stories in the global car business over the past few years. While plenty of European brands have struggled to crack one of the world’s toughest and most price-sensitive markets, Skoda has quietly carved out a reputation for building solid, good-value family cars tailored specifically for Indian buyers.

Models like the Kushaq SUV and Slavia saloon have helped the Czech brand grow fast, while parent company Volkswagen Group has invested heavily in local production to keep costs down.

Now, Skoda’s smallest Indian-built SUV yet could be about to take a much bigger step. The new Skoda Kylaq was designed first and foremost for India – a compact SUV built in India, for Indian roads and Indian buyers. But when I asked Skoda CEO Klaus Zellmer if the Kylaq could eventually make its way to Europe, he admitted the idea is very much on the table.

“There are opportunities out there we’re looking at,” said Zellmer. “Take the Kylaq. Kylaq is a fantastic car – it’s a sub-four-meter car that helped us double our sales volume from 2024 to 2025. That car is, if you look at the design and technology and quality fit and finish, it could potentially… We don’t know, but that is something we could look into.

“If you look at the Fabia, if you squeeze everything out, you get below €20,000. If you look at the price of a Kylaq in India, there’s a massive gap. So, there’s a business rationale that you can challenge and see whether that makes sense.”

The Indian-built Skoda Kylaq is designed specifically for India and built on Skoda’s MQB-A0-IN platform. At just under four meters long – about the same size as the new Fiat Grande Panda – the Kylaq sits firmly in India’s hotly contested small SUV class. Boot space is a useful 446 litres, rising to 1,265 litres with the rear seats folded, while the design is in keeping with Skoda’s current Modern Solid design theme.

There’s just one engine: a 1.0-litre TSI three-cylinder turbo petrol producing 114 bhp and 178 Nm of torque, driving the front wheels through either a six-speed manual or a six-speed automatic gearbox. The Indian range runs from Classic through Classic+, Signature, Signature+, Prestige and Prestige+, with prices from ₹7.59 lakh to ₹12.99 lakh, or roughly £5,930 to £10,150.

With the Volkswagen brand focusing so heavily on China, Zellmer has made it clear that India will be Skoda’s big focus for growth. “Skoda has decided to take a different path because we said we don’t have to be all on the same battlefield,” Zellmer explained.

“There’s a big market, an upcoming market, which is India and this is our sole responsibility. We doubled sales in India last year. We have plans for India to take a platform that our mother company in China has developed, the CMP21, and totally localise it in India for India. We have two factories in India with 5,000 people working there. So, this is the future for Skoda outside Europe, which strategically speaking is really important because we’re now number two in Europe.

“The aspiration is also to hedge our position with business outside Europe. If anything happens to Europe that now happened in the United States or happened in China, we need a second big pillar for our business model and this is for us India, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Middle East. You have to hedge and at the moment we’re 80 per cent Europe and 20 per cent outside Europe, which is not a good hedge.”