Lamborghini expects to sell 100 plus cars a year in India: Sharad Agarwal

Lamborghini last week launched Aventador S at a starting price of Rs 5.01 crore. Sharad Agarwal, head of Automobili Lamborghini India, spoke to Shahkar Abidi about the growth in the super-luxury sports car segment in the country, the effect of demonetization, the sales trends, among other things.

The demand for super-luxury sports cars is still minuscule in India and Lamborghini has launched a couple of cars recently. What makes you believe that the segment is here to stay?

The market for super-fast luxurious cars picked up in 2016. It was at its peak at the beginning of this decade and fell subsequently. In 2016, the segment clocked around 70 cars. In comparison, during the year 2011, around 95-98 units of cars got sold; it dropped down to less than half at about 45 units in 2014. However, it began to pick up in 2015 when the figures marginally rose to around 55-odd cars before finally moving up to just over 70 cars in 2016.

But despite the sales picking up, the number remains very low as compared to other markets.

The super-fast luxury car market is not about numbers, but it indicates the trend through which the economy of a nation goes through. Hence, for example, when the Indian economy was not doing good, the sales figure indeed went down. Now, when the economic indicators are showing signs of improvement and the mood seems positive as well, the sales figures are changing fast for better. If things remain normal as the way they are now, we expect the sales to reach the magic mark of 100 plus in the next 2-3 years.

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Talking further about trends, the changes that are happening in the social-economic makeup of our society are also getting reflected in the profile of our customers. For example, now even women are coming to buy our products individually which was not the case earlier. Last year, one woman from Kolkata purchased a Lamborghini. Two more women purchased after that. Similarly, not very long ago, the customers of such high-value cars would be people from second or third generation entrepreneur families from tier 1 metro cities. On the other hand, now even first generation entrepreneurs are aspiring and owning such cars. With the economy expanding, we are seeing an increasing number of customers coming from small tier-2 and tier-3 cities of the country.

How much are the total taxes and duties which get levied on the import of a luxury car into India? Will the adoption of Goods and Services Tax add to it?

The summation of all taxes, duties around the import of a car come to around 179%. But I do not think GST will have much effect on it as we have been made to understand by the government that the difference between the existing tax structure and the one after the implementation of GST will not be much.

Did you see demonetization affecting the demand?

Ours is a brand which is impossible to hide even if one wants to. The people buying the products in our segment are generally more evolved and passionate about the cars they are driving. Also, they are more likely to be aware of the fact that if they break any driving-related laws, then they are going to catch unwanted attention.

What are the sales numbers you are looking for Aventador S?

Without going into specifics I can say that we have already crossed the 10% share of the volume of the allotted number of units of the Aventador S for India.