There is a shift from pure sports car to more perform ace oriented sports car: Eberhard Kern

This is the ninth launch of Mercedes Benz in India this year. You have almost covered every segment. Where do you see the next phase of growth coming from?
We have number of new ideas. Yes we have covered many segments but not all of them. There are some other interesting segments, where we are not in there yet. For example, CLA, which will be launched at the beginning of the next year. This is the performance sedan segment, where we are not in yet. Then we will look into the sports utility vehicle (SUV). There is a big gap in our portfolio, between the GLA – what we just launched and the ML. So it might be another interesting segment. And there are other ideas, which will help our customers and future customers keep attracted.

How has been the year so far for the company?
Year-to-date till September, the first 3 quarters, we sold 7,529 units, which is 16% plus growth after a very successful 2013. We had announced earlier this year that we will have a double digit growth and we are well on track. So it will be a good year, we have a waiting list for many of our models like ML, GL, S Class. C Class will be phased out and a new C Class will come. So 2014 will be the second consecutive good year for Mercedes Benz here.

But not as good as 2013...
16% for the first 9 months. We had some restrictions on availability, for example the C-Class, the old one is getting phased out, the new one is not available yet. It will be a double-digit growth but not at the level of last year.

Industry is talking about a revival next year. How is Mercedes preparing to meet the expected growth next year?
We follow our strategy, which is based on different factors. One is the portfolio and there our renewed and increased portfolio will be the base for the year to come. Secondly, we are extending our dealer network, this year we added 14 new outlets, 5 of them are already inaugurated and 9 more will come in the next 2 months. And third is to have a manufacturing capacity in place. We are almost done in doubling our capacity. With this, we have highest capacity installed in all luxury car brands in India. This helps us in acting very quickly on change in any demand. These are the pillars of our strategy and if the revival happens, we will be there.

Mercedes has been very aggressive in launching new products in the last two years. Will that continue in the year to come?
We will talk about the products in the beginning of 2015. But given the fact that the CLA and new C Class are not yet launched, it gives a glimpse that there will be exciting products ahead for us.

How has been the performance of AMGs?
Part of our strategy is to focus on four segments – sedans, luxury SUV, compact luxury and the fourth is performance cars. The performance brand for Mercedes Benz is AMG. We developed a strategy for AMGs, the focus is not only on pure sports cars and the sedans but also on the performance SUV. Right now we have 4. There is a trend that people would like to have a kind of a sports car, but which is also usable in day to day life. That's where the performance SUV come in - you can use on race track, go off road, and use daily. This is our assumption and we developed our strategy around this. There is a shift in customer choice from pure sports car to more performance oriented sports car.

Any plans for localising A & B Class?
We decided to localise CLA. Today we produce 5 cars – S, E, C, ML and GL and we decided CLA to be the 6th model to be produced locally. This might be not be the last one. But no decision on A & B yet.