Nouveau riche push up luxury car sales in Gujarat

Luxe loves numbers, too.

The luxury car segment, nestled far from the madding crowd of mass market models, well beyond the last discounts, has lately been seeing a lot of activity. And though the proportion of such car sales to the total car market remains small, the numbers are clearly growing, thanks mainly to the swelling population of high networth individuals and the propensity to spend thereof.

Typically, these are cars priced at the end of the premium car market, say around Rs25-30 lakh and running into crores.

The major players include marques such as Mercedes, BMW and Audi while in Ahmedabad new brands such as Porsche, Jaguar Land Rover and others are expected soon.

Industry experts see the segment growing 30-40% during the current fiscal.

"The luxury car market in India is still small. We expect total sales in the industry to touch around 14,000 units this year. However, we are positive that the market will grow exponentially," says Michael Perschke, head, Audi India.

"If the overall automobile market will exceed 5 million (units) in 2020, the luxury share should be approximately 1.5-2%, giving it a potential of up to 100,000 (units)," says Perschke.

Mercedes, which recently regained the top position in the luxury segment, claims to have pulled ahead of BMW by around 200 units already.

"We currently have a market share of about 42%, ahead of our competition," says Debashis Mitra, director — sales and marketing, Mercedes Benz India.

For the January-August period, BMW India's sales stood at 3,301 cars, translating into a growth of more than 40% year on year.

Audi, also a German carmaker, sold 302 cars in September, a 47% growth year on year, taking its tally for the January-September period to 2,178 units, up 63% vis-a-vis the previous year.

Fuelling this growth is the significant increase in the number of millionaires in recent years. The emergence of an ambitious middle class with increased purchasing power that understands values and aspires to own a luxury brand is a key contributor, too, says the World Wealth Report 2009 released by Merrill Lynch recently.

On their part, the luxury players are aggressively tapping the growing potential by expanding dealer networks and tapping into newer cities.

Among others, Mercedes already has around more than 50 touch points across the country, while BMW plans to increase its dealership count from 18 to 22 in 2011.

"Earlier 70% of our business came from Mumbai and Delhi. However, the trend is shifting.