Volvo Auto aims 20,000 annual car sales in 5 years

Swedish luxury car maker Volvo Auto India plans to adopt an aggressive strategy and take its annual sales in India to 20,000 units in five years, company's Managing Director Tomas Ernberg said today.

The company sold 821 cars in 2012, up from 320 units in the previous calendar year. Volvo now targets 35 per cent growth in 2013 by clocking sales of 1,100 units but Ernberg expressed confidence of "over-achieving" this with the figure expected to be "close to 1500 cars", he said.

The company established its presence in India 2007, and Ernberg acknowledged that it "lacked in advertising in newspapers" vis-a-vis others in the luxury car market. "We plan to continue investing in the brand and grow it in India market with effective marketing strategies," he said.

In the Hyderabad market, Volvo has emerged as the second biggest luxury car player by volume last year, he said. "We want to copy-paste our success in Hyderabad in Bangalore," he said.

The company today announced the appointment of 'Martial Motors Private Ltd" as its dealer in Bangalore. It would appoint a dealer in Kolkata and second dealer in Mumbai later this year, Ernberg said. The company also plans to have service presence for Volvo cars every 100 km in Tamil Nadu by next year-end.

Volvo would launch V40 Cross Country, an SUV, in the Indian market by the end of June, Ernberg said. V40 Cross Country will compete with the likes of BMW X1, company officials said. Volvo is excited about the opportunities in the luxury car market in India, which currently is just one per cent (sales of 28,000 cars in 2012) of the overall industry figure but has the potential to grow fantastically, Ernberg said.