ROUGH RIDE

LUXURY CARMAKERS IN INDIA SHOULD BE IN CRUISE CONTROL GIVEN RISING DEMAND, BUT SUPPLY-CHAIN DISRUPTIONS HAVE ENSURED A POTHOLE-RIDDEN RIDE

- PRERNA LIDHOO

INDIA IS HOME TO MORE than 200,000 millionaires and some hundred-odd billionaires. But these figures are hardly indicative of the country’s luxury car industry. In fact, they’re a total contrast. Last year, only 21,400 luxury cars were sold in the country. “This number should be 10fold,” says Martin Schwenk, Managing Director and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India. Not only do those 21,000-odd cars represent a 37 per cent decline from 2019, but they also account for less than 1 per cent of the overall auto market (in China, it is 13 per cent). For the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Bentley and others, this share has remained unchanged over the past five years. Industry estimates suggest it will take around two more years for sales to reach pre-pandemic levels of 35,000-40,000 units a year.

Sharad Agarwal, Head of Lamborghini India, is quite blunt: “The growth in the super-luxury segment will look smaller than the overall passenger car industry. It’s not like the demand for the segment is going through the roof. The right way to look at how the segment is shaping up is to look at 2019 and start looking at 2021—and treat 2020 as an aberration.”

Even dissected that way, the numbers aren’t promising. Take Mercedes Benz, for instance. India’s No. 1 luxury carmaker sold 4,857 units in the first half (H1) of 2021. That’s 39 per cent more than the 2,948 units it sold in H1 2020, but a 13 per cent drop from the 5,500 units of H1 2019.