Luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz expects India to be the fastest growing market globally this year after it maintained the feat achieved last year. The company has planned for 10 new launches this year but it is pushing some of those plans to Q2 and Q3 of 2023 due to supply chain constraints. This move is to avoid increasing wait times for its products.
While responding to a question about whether India can continue to be the company’s fastest growing market globally, CEO and CEO Santosh Iyer said, “I still see India as India. Degrees are shining among all other countries. When we look at our global reports, the growth is still there in India even in the first two months of the year.”
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The company achieved 41% growth with record sales in 2022 of 15,822 units compared to 11,242 units sold in 2021. Its previous best sales in 2018 were 15,583 units. Though from a volume standpoint, Iyer admits that other advanced markets like the US are much higher than India and even normal growth there means significant volume.
However, as a percentage, India continues to show strong growth momentum for Mercedes, even compared to many Asian markets. “It’s pretty strong for a lot of cars, and we still have an order bank in excess of 4,000 cars,” Iyer said.
On the manufacturing front, Iyer said the company is ramping up production and will therefore not introduce new vehicles this quarter. He added: “Of the ten models we have planned for this year, in the first quarter we only produced the E Cabriolet and now we are pushing the other models to the second and third quarters to have can provide more cars.”
First published date: March 19, 2023, 3:03pm IST
