Mercedes-Benz India today announced the local production of the new S-class 350 CDI from its manufacturing facility in Chakan, Pune. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, managing director and CEO Eberhard Kern spoke about the company's upcoming plans. The luxury car market in India registered growth even as the rest of the passenger car market skidded to its worst performance in years.
Continuing the upbeat tone, he said that the company is optimistic about the future and the sentiment has improved with the new government in place. He added that the luxury car market is doing better now and the company has plenty of launches lined up for India in the coming years.
India is likely to be in one of its top 10 markets and Mercedes-Benz has no plans to export out of India yet, he added.
Further, Kern sees potential for strong demand pick up in coming years.
Also Read: Mahindra launches 'XUV500 Sportz' at Rs 13.68 lakh
Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview.
Q: The luxury car market in India registered growth even as the rest of the passenger car market skidded to its worst performance in years. So, now that we are seeing sings of a pick up in the economy in general are you feeling a lot more confident and optimistic about growth in the luxury car space?
A: Generally it is true of course the automotive car business in the last 1.5-2 years went through a very bumpy period of time. The luxury car market was doing better and is doing better now as well. We have a kind of optimistic outlook for the months to come and for the years to come. When we ask our dealers and talk to our dealers, since the election results are out and it is clear that there is a stable government with maturity and probably not only government being able to make decisions but as well to execute we get the feedback that sentiment is now better again; the mood is better. There is lot of expectation around and going for any investment, going for luxury car or whatever it is not only a rational decision it as well a decision based on emotions and with more positive emotions around we believe that the car business and especially the luxury car business can do better in the months to come.
Shereen: So you are saying that things will look better but quantify for me what you mean by strong growth and where will that take India? Is India likely to be in your bucket of one of the fastest growing markets, is it likely to be in your top five markets for Mercedes globally given the kind of growth rate that you expect?
A: This is not so easy to answer. What we see since mid of May there are more visitors in our showrooms, the number of enquiries went up, the interest in buying a Mercedes-Benz is higher, so this makes us kind of optimistic that a more positive time will be ahead of us. As I shared with you earlier India is one of the focus markets for Mercedes Benz globally. It is one of the markets we developed a strategy, Mercedes Benz 2024. We expect that India's importance in the overall global setup of Mercedes Benz is further growing. It could even be that India develops into one of the top 10 markets of Mercedes Benz for the passenger cars. The focus is there and all the support by Mercedes Benz headquarters in Germany as well is there. We follow our strategy, we take it forward and today is a very important day for us because a much awaited model we are going to launch into the market; it is the S Class diesel, the S350 CDI and given the fact that four out of five Mercedes today in India equipped with diesel engine you can imagine that we are quite happy to have this car now available as well. So, let us see if these expectations what are there in India could be backed by concrete actions. If this happens we believe that India is on a very good way.
For complete interview, watch video
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