India’s largest luxury car manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz, believes the luxury car market of the country will be back to the pre-Covid levels in this quarter (October-December) 2020. As the automaker says, the strong month-on-month growth in demand for luxury cars along with the double-digit growth in the third quarter of 2020 indicates a silver line.
According to ratings and research agency ICRA’s estimates, the luxury car segment in India is expected to register a 40% decline in sales this year to about 21,000 units.
Mercedes-Benz on Wednesday announced that it sold 2,058 cars between July and September, the third quarter of current calendar year, registering 38.5% YoY decline, as compared to the same month a year ago.
Between January and September 2020, Mercedes-Benz has sold 5,007 units cumulatively, recording a 49% decline over the same period of 2019. This was on the back of the historic zero-sales April and the impact of the nationwide three-month-long lockdown imposed by the Indian Government.
Now, with 85% of the pre-Covid sales touched, Martin Schwenk, MD of Mercedes-Benz India is confident about a better fourth quarter of 2020, which is likely to help the German luxury car manufacturer to exceed its sales estimates for 2020. Incidentally, Mercedes-Benz follows January-December financial year, instead of April-March cycle.
Talking about the sales recovery and the expectation, Schwenk said that Mercedes-Benz has seen quite a reasonable recovery. “I am quite satisfied with the September numbers. We have seen more than 25% MoM growth in our retail numbers and we are confident of continuing this momentum in the coming months, amid challenges,” he added.
Schwenk also aid that the automaker’s aim would be to reach 2019’s level in the fourth quarter buoyed by the current growth momentum. According to him, despite the surging Coronavirus cases across India, the optimism among the customers is coming back and that is helping Mercedes-Benz’s business in India.
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