EYES ON THE ROAD

For lyer, the drive is as much about the journey as it is about the destination - whether on the road or steering Mercedes-Benz India into the future

- Sohini Das

It helps that Santosh Iyer enjoys long drives he has just cruised down from Pune to Mumbai in his sleek all-electric Mercedes-Benz EQS for our lunch meeting. The car, he mentions with pride, offers a real-world range of over 700 km on a single charge, making such trips effortless.

We're seated at Shamiana, the allday dining restaurant at the Taj Trees in Vikhroli, where he's ordered a Tuscan vegetable soup.

Tall, thin-built, and always sporting a friendly smile, Iyer embodies a balance of ambition and groundedness. As the managing director and CEO of Mercedes-Benz India, the 48-year-old is one of the youngest to hold this position.

Taking a careful sip of his soup, Iyer reflects on a pivotal moment back in mid-2021 at Mercedes-Benz India's Pune headquarters. A good deal of brainstorming was going on around how best to work out a direct-toconsumer model for the company that would be distinct from the traditional dealer-led retail model.

"Initially, there was a lot of pushback from our dealer partners, and even internally," he recalls. "But the core of luxury is all about the customer experience." I take a spoonful of my chicken and leek soup as he delves deeper into the philosophy behind the change.

"Traditional retail pushes cars to dealers, and discounts often depend on the customer's negotiating skills.

We wanted transparency-no hidden handling charges, no opaque pricing." This October marked three years since Mercedes-Benz India implemented its 'Retail of the Future' model. The results? Over 50,000 cars sold and ₹40,000 crore in revenue.

The success in India has inspired markets like Germany, the UK, Thailand, Turkey, and Australia to follow suit.