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Speaking on the sidelines of launching two sales outlets and a service centre owned by VST Titanium Motors, Eberhard Kern, managing director, Mercedes-Benz India said that during the first half of the current year the company sold around 6,600 units. The second half of the year is expected to be better than the first half, he added.
The company has reported a 41% growth in the first half of 2015 (January-June).
He added, the company is following the 15 in15 policy - 15 new models and 15 new outlets this year- has already launched 10 new models and five more, including C663, AMG AT among five more products, are expected to come in the next four months. Nine new outlets have been opened this year and six more are to come.
Kern said, during the first half of the year, the growth has been due to new launches as well C,E,S classes, entry level A and B compact models as well SUVs.
The company sold 6,659 units during the first half and second quarter growth was about 43% to 3,093 units. The half year sale of 2015 surpassed the full year sale of 2012.
"With 78 outlets in 39 cities the Mercedes-Benz brand has the densest network for a luxury car brand in India," said Kern.
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"The sales growth in South is higher," Kern said and said Mercedes-Benz India gets two thirds of the company's business is from upper end models.
According to him company's one third of the sales come from A, B, CLA models while the rest two-third through SUV, Classical models of E,C,S and other premium models.
"This trend continue to be there as we offer ranges between Rs 26 lakh to Rs 2 crore with wider ranges and the only company to have so," he claimed.
According to him, the luxury car segment is expected to see a total volume of around 38,000 units in 2015 as against 34,000 units sold in 2014 in the country. The total volume is around 1.5% of the overall car market in India, but is higher than some of the Asian markets.
On pre-owned car business, Kern said, the company hopes to do a volume of around 3,000 units this year and out of five cars sold one is pre-owned, Kern said.
The company launched the business in 2014 and hope to sell 3,000 cars with Merc certified in 2015. Currently it has 12 outlets to sell used cars.
"The used luxury car sales will outpace new car sales in next two to three years as more and more people look at luxury driving experience," said Kern, adding that there are 70,000 customers in India for Mercedes, he added.
