Mercedes-Benz expects India to be its fastest growing market globally this year

Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz expects that India will be its fastest growing market globally this year as well after it maintained the feat that it had achieved last year as well. The company has planned ten new launches this year but it is pushing some of those to the second and third quarters of 2023 due to supply chain constraints. The move is aimed to avoid further increase in the waiting period of its products.

While responding to a query on whether India can continue to be the company's fastest growing market globally, Managing Director and CEO Santosh Iyer said, “I still see India to be shining among all the other countries. When we see our global reports the growth is still there in India even in the first two months of the year."

The company posted a 41 per cent growth with a record sales in 2022 at 15,822 units as compared to 11,242 units sold in 2021. Its previous best sales was achieved in 2018 at 15,583 units. Though from volume point of view, Iyer admitted that other advanced markets like the US are much higher than India and even a normal growth there means a significant amount of volume.

However, from percentage point of view, India still continues to show strong growth momentum for Mercedes, even compared to many of the Asian markets. “It is quite strong for many of the car lines and we still have an order bank exceeding 4,000 cars," Iyer said.

On the production front, Iyer said that the company is ramping up production and thus not introducing new cars in this quarter. "Out of the ten cars that we have planned for this year, in the first quarter we only did the E Cabriolet and now we are pushing other cars to quarter two and quarter three so that we can supply more cars," he added.