Mercedes retained top position for fourth consecutive year in luxury car segment

The country's largest luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz India anticipates a "reasonable" growth both for itself and the domestic industry even as it remains "cautiously" optimistic about the market, which had a bumpy ride last year. The German luxury carmaker, which controls over 40 per cent of the domestic luxury car market that had a volume of just 41,000 units in 2018, Thursday re-entered the multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) segment launching the V-Class in two variants--the 6-seater Exclusive, and the 7-seater Expression.

The 2.2-liter diesel vehicle is priced at Rs 68.40 to Rs 81.90 lakh and is imported from its Spanish plant. The V Class is sold in over 90 markets globally. Mercedes, which had existed the MPV segment in 2011 after failing to get volumes for its R Class, also said it will continue with its strategy of new offerings and network expansion to drive growth under which it will have 10 launches this year and expand reach to 20 more cities.

Mercedes retained its top position in the luxury car segment for the fourth consecutive year in 2018 selling 15,538 vehicles, this makes it control over 40 per cent of the luxury car market. This year, Merc plans 10 new models and the V Class is first of them. The luxury vehicle segment accounts for nearly 1.5 per cent of the total passenger vehicles market in the country which stood at over 2.5 million in 2018. The luxe car market is estimated to have logged in a tepid 4.5 per cent growth at around 41,000 units last year owing to weak consumer sentiment amid market headwinds.

"The year 2018 was challenging for the market which moved up a small notch but still we were successful in keeping our market leadership and our product offensive in 2018 was one of the key reasons for retaining that," said Martin Schwenk, the new managing director and chief executive at Mercedes-Benz India. He said they are excited to begin 2019 by introducing the V-Class from their global portfolio, which is imported from Spain. The V-Class underscores our intent to re-enter the luxury MPV segment here, he said.

"There was quite an instability in the third quarter of 2018 as oil prices went up, the rupee was a free-fall and stock market went into a chill. But the situation has changed a bit in the fourth quarter. "So, for the coming year, we are cautiously optimistic.

I would not expect rapid growth either for the industry or for the Merc brand. We will have reasonable growth but not rapid growth," said Schwenk. He said for a big car maker like Mercedes-Benz it is more difficult to log in a double-digits growth than a marginal player.

"In the passenger car market, and in our segment, we see a growth year-on-year. But overall the trend is quite bullish. I am very confident of continuing to grow here," Schwenk added. He further said their focus will continue to remain the number one in customer satisfaction, along with volumes.

"Customer satisfaction, strong products and a network are what we need to further grow here," he said, adding they plan to enter 20 more tier 2 & 3 cities by the middle of this year. He sounded confident about the V-Class fetching volumes saying, "we did not have a car like this here in all these years. I am very positive that there will be a market for 6- 7-seater cars. There is a lot of interest in the market which we think we can fulfil."

He said the company has plans to roll out 10 new products across segments in 2019 and the V Class has is the maiden model for from that plan. Mercedes-Benz India completes 25 years in 2019 and as part of the celebrations we have some of the most awaited products planned for the year, he added.