Mercedes Benz, the country’s largest luxury car maker has received an order book of 1,500 GLCs within a couple of weeks of opening the bookings, which is an average of an impressive 100 bookings per day.
This swelled the company’s order book to 3500 to 4000 cars, amounting to almost Rs 3000 crore of revenue, with almost a third or Rs 1000 crore coming from the all new GLC.
The launch of GLC SUV (priced between Rs 73.5 lakh to Rs 74.5 lakh), which accounts for almost 15% of its total sales of the company – will bridge a critical product portfolio gap for the company and help the brand sustain a double-digit growth momentum for 2023.
This will be 14th model which will be assembled by Mercedes Benz at its Chakan plant, and the company has invested about Rs 100 crore to produce this new model.
Santosh Iyer, MD of Mercedes Benz India says, the demand for GLC has been tremendous and the company has received the highest ever booking for any model in a short span of two weeks. He said the GLC forms a part of the core luxury segment at the company, which accounts for 60% of total volumes.
“The GLC launch will only make the core luxury segment even bigger, because this product for the last 6 months has not been in the market. You can feel the vacuum there. So, it is quite strategic for us. It is quite big for us from a volume perspective. Having said that, volumes we are leading, continuing to do well and grow, but clearly, our strategy is not just to chase number growth. It is more focused on the top end strategies and customer experiences,” added Iyer.
To up the desirability quotient, the company debuted the all new GLC at its new Mar 20X showroom in the heart of business district in Gurgaon. The showroom imbibes the new retail strategy of Mercedes Benz offering private consulting and immersive experience driven consultation, with latest digital tools and trained workforce, claimed the car maker with three pointed stars.
The company has already launched 6 models so far in 2023, with a significant focus on the top end vehicle segment priced above Rs 1.5 crore. The launch of GLC will reinforce the core segment – which accounts for 60% of its total sales. The company sells five key models like GLB, GLE, C, E, in the core luxury segment priced between Rs 60 lakh to Rs 1 crore.
Iyer says the company’s portfolio is fairly well balanced with both sedans and SUVs – with both body styles amounting to almost equal share of sales, with a slight skew in favour of SUVs.
To sustain the excitement further in the festive season, the company has lined up another 4 new launches for the rest of the calendar year.
Mercedes Benz on its part sold over 8500 cars in the first half of 2023, posting a growth of 13% and Iyer expects to end 2023 with a double-digit growth thereby hitting a new peak.
So far in the first half – January to June – approximately 20,000 luxury cars were sold and with a significant chunk of sales likely to come up in the upcoming festive season, the market is likely to breach the previous high of 42,000 cars and hit a new peak.
Having witnessed various ups and downs in volumes and growth, Iyer says the luxury car market over the last decade has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 10-12% and he expects the double digit rate of growth to continue in the coming decade too, before the country hits an inflection point in 2030.
“There are 2 aspects to economic development and cultural development. The culture transformation is happening, it’s a bit slower, but there will be an inflection point when they both come together in a significant manner post 2030. Then one may see growth will accelerate,” he added.